Offshore staff

BROUSSARD, Louisiana -- Delmar Systems has installed the Gulf of Mexico's first gravity-installed vertical load anchor (VLA). The anchor was installed at Anadarko's Garden Banks 667 location in late December 2007.

The anchor was deployed from the Alex Chouest AHTS and penetrated the seabed. It was pull tested and abandoned on the seabed with mooring line forerunner attached. The anchor line later was connected to Diamond Offshore's Ocean Star MODU using Delmar's subsea mooring connector to connect the preset mooring line to the rig's self-contained mooring components.

"The OMNI-Max is capable of being loaded in any direction 360 degrees around the axis of the anchor," says Evan Zimmerman, Delmar's engineering manager. "Under extreme loading and uplift angle conditions, the anchor will penetrate deeper into the soil to gain the needed holding capacity. This technology is an industry first that may allow damaged moorings to survive longer in the event of multiple line failure since the load angle can change without the capacity of the foundation being adversely affected."

02/05/2008