Marine Crane Saipem 7000

By TeeGeeNo at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The ship has two revolving cranes, each can lift 7000 tonnes at 40 meters (130'). So the ship can lift 14,000 tonnes. It has eight 12-cylinder 8400 hp diesel engines. (That is about twice the horsepower of a diesel locomotive engine.) It is a semi-submersible that can cruise at 9.5 knots with a draft of 10.5m (35'), and it can work with a draft of 43.5m (143'). It has 12 thrusters and "a grade III dynamic positioning system as per the Det Norske Veritas (DNV) stipulations." Alternatively, it has 16 anchor lines, four at each corner. It also has "two ballast systems with a total capacity of more than 100,000 cu. m. for better operational ease." It has living accommodations (including a hospital, gym and cinema), workshops and a 9,000 sq. m. free deck area to support a large staff that does oil platform installation/repair jobs and laying pipelines. Now it is also being used to remove oil platforms that have been decommissioned. It has had two major upgrades since it was built in the 1980s. [MarineInsight] It was built by Fincantieri, which I recognize as the company that bought the Sturgeon Bay Shipyard that was built by Manitowoc.

saipem-renewables and screenshot

Thank goodness for Google search results because I could not find information on the 7000 from Saipem's home page by clicking links. Google found a saipem-7000 link.

saipem-7000

Saipem 7000 .pdf, p2
[I assume the blue tower is the J-lay tower that was added to help lay pipelines.]

Saipem 7000 .pdf, p11

Saipem 7000 .pdf, p4

Saipem 7000 .pdf, p6

(new window)  When a single crane does a lift, they use the other crane as a counterweight. It not only rotates, it lowers its boom to create a moment of inertia closer to that of the lift crane.


(new window)


(new window)  This also looks like the Saipem 7000 in action.
It looks like they built multiple platforms and then interconnected them. In particular, the living accommodations are separated from the drilling activity. That strikes me as a significant safety innovation.


I left out some videos that had too much talking and not enough action. And I don't like scenes of people watching something; I'd rather see what they are looking at. I also avoided videos with talking heads telling me things that could apply to any big job like "we had to carefully plan the operation" and "we have good, well-trained people."

This post brought this crane to my attention and provided the link: the current record in the Gulf of Mexico is "just" 11,000t.