Chouest’s Port Fourchon ‘one-stop shop’ designed to reduce turnaround time
David Paganie
David Paganie, Senior Editor
The Chouest family of companies, the largest tenant at Port Fourchon, was founded in Galliano, La., in 1960.
Chouest’s portfolio of services offered from Port Fourchon includes logistics support, staging and storage, tank cleaning, vessel repair, and riser inspection and repair.
The company’s primary services are launch- ed from its C-Port, C-Port 2, Martin Terminal, and North American Shipbuilding-Fourchon facilities. With these capabilities, Chouest at Port Fourchon can market itself as a ‘one-stop shop, designed to reduce vessel turnaround time.
The Chouest companies currently service many of the major deepwater projects in the Gulf, including some 52 rigs.
Slip concept
The Chouest-owned C-Port terminals comprise 18 covered slips, 37 overhead cranes, 25-ft drafts, complete dockside services, and 24-hour access. One of the slips is equipped with a 200-ton overhead crane, specifically for heavy-lift operations. Other services performed within this slip include testing of subsea trees before loadout, and handling of suction piles and synthetics.
“These services are performed portside ready for loading directly onto an anchor handling vessel, which reduces boat-time, manhours and overall turnaround time,” says Gary Chouest, president of Chouest.
According to Chouest, C-Port was actually conceptualized in response to draft limitations experienced by the company while supporting Shell’s Auger project out of a Morgan City facility. Concurrently, it was also building larger vessels that carried up to three times more cargo than its predecessors. As a result, Chouest decided to build a port equipped with facilities to reduce turnaround time.
“The C-Port’s slip concept was derived from a proposal issued to Shell to minimize bulkhead costs,” says Chouest. “With the slip concept, you only need to load a vessel on the aft deck. In addition, the slips are fitted with crawler cranes on the finger piers between the slips, which allow for cross-tying between bulk heads to reduce costs.”
After approval from Shell, Chouest proceeded with construction of the port’s 18 covered slips at Fourchon, each designed with 25,000 sq ft of staging area.
|
C-Port 2 on the E-Slip in Port Fourchon. (Inset) Island Frontier is the first subsea well intervention vessel delivered in the Island Offshore joint venture.
|
Next Page
Page 1 of 3
Volume 66 Issue 3
March 2006
Add RSS Feed