Oil and gas support vessels to benefit from comms upgrade
Bourbon Offshore, a division of the Bourbon Group headquartered in France, operates in 30 countries with 388 offshore vessels at sea and a further 111 on order. Recently Bourbon ordered the Thrane & Thrane FleetBroadband 500 for installation on 25 of its offshore oil and gas support vessels, a move designed to upgrade their ship-to-shore capabilities to state-of the-art real time satellite communications technology. Specifically, the FBB Sailor 500 will be installed on 25 new platform supply vessels and anchor handling tugs being built at Sino Pacific Shipyards in Dayang and Zheijang, China.
Having originally decided to go with the earlier version Fleet 77 marine satellite internet system, the decision was made to upgrade to the Fleetbroadband 500 instead, allowing Bourbon to take advantage of the Sailor 500’s superior feature set (functionality) and the inherent significant cost savings over the Fleet 77.
“Inmarsat Fleet has served the marine and offshore sectors well. It made the best use of satellite technology available and enabled real use of internet at sea,” a satellite communications spokesman said. “This has provided tangible benefits to users, but the huge jump in bandwidth provided by FleetBroadband (Sailor series terminals) enables a next generation of offshore vessel applications.”
Thrane & Thrane business development director Mike Kellner said it was vital operators chose not only a solution that can withstand the harsh offshore environment, but also one which benefits from a strong support network. Kellnor added: “As the project to supply SAILOR 500 FleetBroadband for Bourbon Offshore’s ‘newbuildings’ demonstrates, a foundation of reliable feature-rich hardware is vital, but the support and customer focus behind it is important too.”