Offshore staff
WAASA, Finland – Wärtsilä is collaborating with Maersk Drilling on a 25-year thruster maintenance strategy for Maersk’s three semisubmersibles and four drillships.
The two parties have already completed strategic work on the D-rigs and started a similar task on the V-Drillships.
By reducing thruster exchange time, the rigs should need to spend less time in sheltered waters for thruster maintenance, Wärtsilä says.
The joint strategy defines planning procedures for scheduled maintenance and thruster services/equipment exchange in emergency scenarios.
They claim that the resultant understanding of each other’s operations and needs will help them plan and further develop more efficient ways of performing thruster maintenance, in addition to optimizing logistics.
Wärtsilä’s scope includes provision of spare thrusters and long-term storage maintenance for the semisubsMaersk Developer, Maersk Discoverer and Maersk Deliverer, which are each equipped with eight LMT-FS3501 thrusters.
Four new spare thrusters will be delivered this year and added to the four existing spare units. With a full set of eight spare thrusters it should be possible to reduce the shutdown period significantly, Wärtsilä claims, by hot swopping all eight thrusters with the spare units.
This should provide greater flexibility for planning shutdowns with clients to ensure minimal impact on their operations.
02/23/2018
