$1 million Subsea Well Response Project order for Amarinth

06 March, 2015

In light of recent serious oil spill incidents such as Macondo, in the Gulf of Mexico, nine international oil and gas companies, including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Shell, Statoil and Total, are working together through the Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP) in collaboration with Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) pooling expertise and resources to develop and make available to the international oil and gas industry a global containment toolkit that can support subsea well incident response if well shut-in is not immediately possible.

Shell is the operator of the project out of its headquarters in Stavanger, Norway, overseen by an Operating Committee comprising of one representative from each participating company. Although the equipment specifications were based on the Shell Design and Engineering Practices (DEPs), each operator had an input producing a unique composite specification for this project.

Full quality supplier audit

Expro North Sea, selected by the Operating Committee to deliver the transfer pumps and coolers for the project, implemented a rigorous full quality supplier audit before finally awarding Amarinth the $1 million contract for ten API 610 OH1 B Series pumps with Plan 53B Seal Support systems. The audit, conducted over three days, involved tracing a high percentage of components right back to their original manufacture and not allowing work to proceed through the stages of manufacture until all approvals had been received by them.

The pumps will be mounted three per skid and are designed to fit on the deck of the supply vessel ready for rapid deployment anywhere in the world at any time in the event of an environmental situation occurring. The pumps will help contain and quickly remove oil from the sea and offload it into tankers for removal from the incident. The tenth pump will be a maintained as a complete spare so that downtime is minimised should there be a need to swap out a pump at short notice. SWRP are currently training their operators in the use of the equipment in readiness for its final commissioning.

Oliver Brigginshaw, managing director of Amarinth, commented: “We are delighted to be supplying our pumps to the Subsea Well Response Project which has such huge potential to protect the global environment in the event of a subsea incident. As would be expected for such a critical project, the selection and audit process set by the consortium of operators was extremely rigorous and we are pleased that the quality of our products, service, processes and quality procedures has once again been recognised by the oil and gas industry with the award of this contract.”

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