Oslo: In the face of a growing global shortage of experienced offshore personnel, Norway's Offshore Simulator Centre AS (OSC) has just won two new Asian contracts to help train seafarers in purpose-built facilities to be set up in Singapore and Perth, Australia. In Singapore, OSC will establish a new simulator training centre costing about Nkr20m ($3.9m) for Bourbon Offshore, which already has a similar facility in Marseilles. The company will also provide another simulator for part-owner Farstad in Perth, Australia. The Singapore facility is due to be commissioned in September and Farstad's Perth set-up should open around the end of the year.
As oil exploration moves into deeper and more hostile waters and record oil prices generate an increasingly frenetic search for new oil supplies, offshore operators are increasingly concerned over crew shortages. OSC's technical director Ove Bjørneseth , explains that his company can now provide a carefully tailored model for anchor handling tugs and platform support vessels. OSC is a partnership equally owned by the Ålesund University College, Oslo-listed Farstad, Marintek of Tronheim and Rolls Royce Marine.
For Bourbon, the Singapore facilities will be established to model the behaviour of its GPA 254L hull, which can be fitted out for both anchor handling and support vessel duties. Bourbon has more than 50 such vessels on order. Meanwhile Oslo-listed Farstad is busy recruiting more seagoing personnel in Singapore, Australia and Brazil. And a search for extra seafarers is now underway in Indonesia and the Philippines.
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