Most Powerful Seismic Ship Named
The third of four Ramform Titan-class vessels, the Ramform Tethys, was celebrated in a naming ceremony at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Shipbuilding yard in Nagasaki, Japan last week.
The Ramform Tethys is the most powerful and efficient marine seismic acquisition vessel in the world, and along with the first two Ramform Titan-class vessels, Ramform Titan and Ramform Atlas, the widest ships ever at the waterline.
These first two vessels were delivered to PGS in 2013 and 2014. The Ramform Tethys has been upgraded to include small modifications relating to equipment handling on the back deck and to have an increase in engine power up from the 23,040 kW of the earlier vessels.
On Ramform Tethys, mutually redundant twin engine rooms provide a total power pack of 26.4 megawats to drive three 6,000 kW controlled pitch propellers. She can tow a full spread of dual-sensor recording equipment using just two of them.
Two stern-launched work boats permit safe streamer maintenance also in marginal weather. Maritime and seismic equipment maintenance can increasingly be carried out at sea without impairing operations. Drydocking interval is 7.5 years.
"With the increased power output and the back deck modifications we are enhancing the Ramform Titan-class acquisition platform further. Productivity, safety, stability and redundancy are the key benefits of these vessels. Their ability to tow many streamers gives high data quality with dense cross-line sampling and cost efficient acquisition with wide tows," says Per Arild Reksnes, EVP Operations.
The design dovetails advanced maritime technology to the imaging capabilities of the GeoStreamer seismic acquisition technology. The vessel’s 70 meter broad stern is fully exploited with 24 streamer reels: 16 reels aligned abreast and eight reels further forward, with capacity for 12 kilometer (7.5 mile) streamers on each reel.
With such capabilities, the Ramform Tethys has tremendous flexibility and redundancy for high capacity configurations, says PGS. Increased work space and advanced equipment handling mean safer and even more robust operations. The Ramform concept design is made by Roar Ramde.
Ramford Tethys carries over 6,000 tons of fuel and equipment.
