Jetoil - a Potential High Speed Marine Offshore Support Vehicle

ABSTRACT Description of Work In 1975 the Jetfoil was introduced into scheduled passenger service in Hawaii and Hong Kong. It is a fully submerged foil hydrofoil that employs turbine powered waterjet propulsion and automatic stabilization and control to enable high speed operations in rough seas. Applications. High speed transport of crews and materials, oil spill containment and recovery equipment, and critically needed equipment to offshore sites. Potential for fire fighting role. Results, Conclusions and General Observations Configuration, performance and economic information will be presented. Key technical features, results of tests and present operations will be discussed. Extensive use of films will be used during the actual presentations. INTRODUCTION The transportation of men, equipment and supplies in support of offshore oil/gas field development and production is a major and growing business. The U.S. petroleum industry spent over one-half billion dollars in 1974 to purchase transportation services for domestic U.S. offshore operations. This money was in addition to that spent by the oil companies for company owned equipment and employed labor to provide transportation. It has been estimated that the free world petroleum industry will spend more than $10 billion on offshore transportation during the next 10 years. This estimate is based on current dollars and economic escalation factors are not included. Technical escalation factors are also not considered and-the estimate is based on providing more of the same type of equipment to do essentially the same jobs. How valid is this? In 1975 there were about 3400 craft in service in the offshore oil/gas fleet. 1900 were surface ships and 1500 were helicopters. Most of the applications and techniques in use evolved from experience gained in operations in the Gulf of Mexico and the resulting techniques and equipment have been "exported" to other areas of the world. In some cases neither the techniques or the equipment have been very well suited to the environment of the other areas. In fact, it hasn't always been well suited to the total needs of the Gulf itself. While specific configurations of surface vehicles have been developed from offshore support needs, the technology is that of the conventional ship which has changed very little in hundreds of-years. Conventional offshore support boats are relatively slow. When the seas get rough they are slower. Early drilling and production operations in the Gulf were carried out close to the beach and boat transit times were held to a few hours except in storm conditions. But drilling and production operations have moved further from shore into deeper and rougher waters. Sea transit times are long and transporting crews under these conditions is nota very attractive proposition. Not only is it unpleasant for the crew, but work is seriously affected by reduced human efficiency and increased accidents and tool breakage when the new crew takes over after a long rough trip. In addition, the transfer from the ship to the platform in rough water is difficult and dangerous.