Owners of the two common OSV types, PSVs and AHTS vessels, would find themselves trying to match the requirements of oil majors seeking larger and more complex vessels to work alongside their modern rigs, according to Sven Ziegler, head of offshore research at RS Platou.
“There is a need for the right type of assets for those modern rigs. PSVs, for example, would need DP2 feature and firefighting equipment, hence larger units are preferred. On AHTS vessels, they also need to be dimensioned to work with modern jack-ups,” Ziegler told delegates at the Sea Asia Offshore Marine Forum, organised by Seatrade and Singapore Maritime Foundation, held in Singapore on Wednesday.
“Smaller OSVs are likely to be marginalised,” he said, adding that oil companies focusing more on safety has in turn led to additional requirements for higher specification OSVs.
PSVs with capacity of more than 4,000 dwt are considered large and capable of working in deepwater and harsher sea environments, while large AHTS vessels are more than 15,000 bhp in size. However, mid-sized AHTS vessels of 10,000-14,999 bhp are large enough to support the new generation of jack-ups, according to Duncan Telfer, commercial director of Swire Pacific Offshore (SPO).
While the outlook for larger and more complex OSVs is anticipated to remain bright in the foreseeable future, players have also noted the rather huge orderbook backlog of OSVs that may pose a threat to the delicate market demand-supply equilibrium.
The order backlog for large PSVs is at more than 30% of the existing operating capacity while AHTS vessels of 5,000-6,000 bhp operating in shallow waters is seeing an order backlog of about 7% of existing operating capacity.
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