On Monday November 25, 2013 the Norwegian Company ULSTEIN announced in a press release they have been given the green light to go ahead with construction on their largest design yet. Through a joint company, Island Ventures II LLC, both Island Offshore and Edision Chouest Offshore Companies (ECO) have ordered a vessel built. One to be constructed at the ULSTEIN Verft facility and the other at the Edison Chouest LaShip yard in Houma, Louisiana. This will also be the first ULSTEIN design to be constructed in the United States.
ULSTEIN SX165 Rendering
The ULSTEIN Group is an internationally ranked Naval Architecture firm and ship building group headquartered in Ulsteinvik, Norway. While in the international arena they are very well known their patented X-BOW design it has been a relatively new development in the shipping industry. Since the first hull constructed in 2006 there have been over 40 more completed for different offshore applications. ULSTEIN also has other systems developed and continue to be on the creative front.
According to the press release by ULSTEIN the new vessel has been given the model number SX165. The vessel will be 147.5m Long and 28m wide. She will have 2 cranes having lifting capacities of 400 and 140 tones respectfully as well as having three moon pools in order to accommodate ROV operations. The largest pool of the three being 11.2m x 12m. The vessel will be built with triple redundancy having three engine rooms of course having catalyst systems to reduce NOx. She will also be built to new health safety and environment (HSE) international standards and have a total of 4 lifeboats. Total capacity of the ship is 200 people.
ULSTEIN SX165 Rendering
ULSTEIN's various offshore designs are very impressive and this one is no different. Pushing vessel designs and continually looking for new technological advances is exciting to see and we commend ECO on going ahead with this design. We will soon follow up on what the X-BOW is and how it actually works and continue to follow these designs as they progress and excited to see the first one leave an American yard.