Helsinki: Wärtsilä Ship Design has received major orders from customers in China and India, including a Deepwater Engineering Survey Vessel design for China Oilfield Services Ltd (pictured). This is a 105-metre, 4,300dwt vessel capable of drilling operating at deep water for geotechnical surveys and geophysical surveys: to date, most of China's oil exploration has been in relatively shallow waters, but there is now a need to probe deeper.
In addition, the Chinese state-owned Shanghai Salvage Company has ordered a 123-metre Multi-Purpose Support Vessel design from Wärtsilä in order to carry out year-round tasks along the coastline of China. The key requirement is for multi-purpose flexibility since the vessel will be required to carry out a multitude of different operations, including salvage, offshore engineering services, diving and ROV operations, fire-fighting, anchor handling, ship supply, environmental protection, and route clearing.
In India, a 110-metre, 4,500dwt Diving Support Vessel design has been ordered by India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), and will provide a stable platform for saturation and air-diving operations. In addition to diving operations and construction work, the vessel is to provide field support and will, therefore, be fitted with sophisticated fire-fighting and oil recovery equipment.
The Wärtsilä Ship Design unit was set up recently following the acquisitions of the ship design companies Vik-Sandvik and Schiffko. The latest acquisition, the Singaporean based Conan Wu & Associates will also be part of the Ship Design unit.
Jaakko Eskola, Group Vice President, Ship Power, Wärtsilä Corporation, comments: "From a strategic point of view, being able to offer ship design services is a very important step for Wärtsilä, since it brings us even closer to our ship owner and shipyard customers. The role of ship design is becoming increasingly important in the value chain, due to higher integration and more sophisticated systems onboard most vessels and increasingly stringent environmental regulations. In addition the ship design is more and more linked to system providers, shipyards and integrators."
"Ship production is moving away from traditional ship building countries in the west to emerging markets where there is a need for ship design skills," he adds. [23/09/08]
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