On Wednesday, 12th of November the OSRL Subsea Well Intervention Service (SWIS) team hosted their second members’ day at the SWIS base in Saldanha Bay, South Africa. This followed on from a successful event at the Cape Town Global Dispersant Service (GDS) base in October 2016.
In total, 15 visitors attended the members’ day, from South African Petroleum Industry Association (SAPIA), Eni, Chevron, Engen, various Government departments, the Port Authority and Oil Tanking/MOGS. The mixture of attendees enabled interesting discussions regarding the future drilling operations planned by some of the major operators in 2018/19.
The morning session included the following presentations:
- Types or sources of offshore spills
- Challenges of responding to an offshore South Africa spill
- Possible techniques to respond to an offshore South Africa spill - aerial surveillance, use of dispersant, offshore containment and recovery operations, in situ burning, etc
- SWIS capping stacks and other equipment.
- Satellite Imagery during spills
- Surveillance, SCAT, Training and an overview of Geomatics.
After lunch, OSRL gave a presentation on Tier 1 and 2 Equipment Hire Preparedness, including several case studies of past and ongoing projects. The Corporate video was also shown to demonstrate the wide capabilities of OSRL in support of our members, including the availability of the new aviation services with the 727s, Hercules, WACAF and UKCS aircraft. All of these sessions drew some interesting and lively response and questions from all of the attendees.
The last element of the afternoon took place in the capping stack warehouse, providing the attendees with an overview of the capping stack itself, as well as demonstrations of the use of various equipment, including boom, fast tank, AFEDO spray system and the skimmer demonstrator.
The event was deemed to be a resounding success, with all aspects of the day enjoyed by the attendees. The yard demonstration of our equipment was a highlight of the day in many ways, with many people being amazed at how a skimmer worked, as well as the adaptability of the AFEDO boat spray system.
