In the case of Rosebank, equipment must work at depths of 3,600 feet, and its surface production vessel must withstand waves 98 feet high or more.
He also said BP would bring another production vessel from South America as a backup in case of problems with those currently at the well site.
Next spring, Terra Nova, a $200 million, 14-story oil production vessel will move 220 miles east of here, lock into place over a 400-million-barrel pool of oil, and start pumping 100,000 barrels a day, largely for the Northeastern United States.
But the Horizon was a drill ship, not a production vessel, so the workers had been told to cap the well for later use and move on to the next job.
Shell is also looking to make up for production lost in Nigeria, where militants attacked an offshore production vessel in June, and in Russia, where it had to sell its share in the Sakhalin Island oil and natural gas project to the state-controlled energy company Gazprom last year.
Today, the cacophony from 1,300 workers hammering and welding the Terra Nova production vessel near here are drawing attention to two new trends: Americans' growing reliance on Canada for energy, and the future of Atlantic Canada as a major supplier of oil and natural gas to the Northeastern United States.
Statoil has awarded Aker Solutions a front end engineering design (FEED) contract for the Trestakk field tie-in to the Åsgard A production vessel in the Norwegian Sea.
In addition to the single-vessel operation mode, a two-ship tandem arrangement is employed during the transfer of cargo (offloading) from the main production vessel to a shuttle vessel that takes the oil to other processing plants.
Typical uses may also involve the transport of produced fluids from a subsea production system to a floating production vessel or the transport of gas or water for re-injection into the producing reservoirs.
