French orders to foreign shipyards

80
Kiesse,
supply vessel,
blt 1999
by CMN,
owned by
Sonasurf Ltd
The delicate recovery of the drilling market in shallow
waters in US Gulf, and the opening of the Brazilian market
to foreign companies provides a relative amount of optimism
concerning genuine sector recovery at the end of 2000
and in early 2001.
Construction and underwater work
A large number of construction, pipe laying and pipe
recovery vessels were ordered this year including the
“FDS” by Bouygues Offshore and the “Deep Blue” by
Coflexip Stena Offshore (CSO). Cal Dive, one of whose
main shareholders is CSO, ordered a dynamically positioned
semi-submersible rig from Amfels with delivery set for the
end of 2001. SCS also ordered a 30-meter jumboisation
for the “Seaway Condor”. At the end of the year, the
Chinese shipyard Yantai Raffles, in association with the
US Company Friede Goldman Halter, won the bid for the
China National Offshore Oil Corporation to build a modern
unit for delivery in 2001.
This amounts to a praiseworthy effort to update fleets.
After several years without any new orders for pipe laying
or removal vessels, the ageing fleet’s technical obsolescence
was beginning to show. Most of the existing pipe laying
and recovery vessels use the traditional anchoring procedure
that is poorly adapted to deepwater operations.
A large number of AHTS and PSV multi-task support vessels
with ROV (Remote Offshore Vehicle) capability and with
the DP II annotation have been delivered and are yet to
be delivered.
We are witnessing a merger phenomenon in this sector also.
DSND bought up the Hays Ships’ fleet, with a flexible cable
layer, “Kommander Subsea 3000”, and two ROV/construction
support vessels, “Komander Subsea” and “Komander
Subsea 2000”.
In December 1999, SCS took over ETPM to become the
worldwide leader in underwater subcontracting to oil
companies with turnover of $1.4 billion.
The year 2000 should be more difficult for both speciality
and general offshore contractors. We expect a clear drop
in sales for the sector. On the other hand, the maintenance
market should be operating at high speed. In this light,
Halliburton subsidiary Subsea’s search for an ROV support
ship on long-term charter is an encouraging sign.
Cable laying vessels
The main highlight of the year has been the performance
of the fibre optic cable laying market, with its associated
underwater operations carried out by vessels equipped