Acquisition adds scope to submarine services

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 9, 2006

Nexans has signed a contract with Bourbon Cable, a Norwegian subsidiary of the French company Bourbon, to purchase the C/S Bourbon Skagerrak, one of the world's most powerful cable-laying vessels.

Nexans has signed a contract with Bourbon Cable, a Norwegian subsidiary of the French company Bourbon, to purchase the C/S Bourbon Skagerrak, one of the world's most powerful cable-laying vessels.

Nexans has operated her exclusively for many years within the framework of its submarine high voltage energy cable activities.

She will be renamed C/S Nexans Skagerrak and will continue to serve customers worldwide.

"This purchase confirms Nexans' commitment to the submarine cable and umbilical markets and underlines our strategy to provide our customers with a comprehensive turnkey service from design, development and manufacture to installation", says Yvon Raak, Nexans' Executive Vice President Europe Area.

Nexans has retained operational control of the C/S Skagerrak on a long-term charter basis for many years, during which time she has been involved in a variety of major submarine cable projects such as: both power links between Spain and Morocco (1997 and 2005); the Gemini project in the Gulf of Mexico (1999); the Abu Safah project in Saudi Arabia (2004).

C/S Skagerrak is currently involved in the NorNed link between Norway and the Netherlands which, at 580km, will be the world's longest high-voltage submarine power link.

The C/S Skagerrak was the first purpose-built vessel to be designed specially for the transport and installation of submarine high-voltage power cables and umbilicals.

To date, there are only two vessels of this kind in the world.

The vessel is currently equipped with a 7000 tonne capacity 29m diameter turntable, a computer based laying control system and a state of the art dynamic positioning system, and can also deploy Nexans' specialist Capjet ROV trenching systems for cable burial operations.

Nexans assumed operation of the vessel at the end of October 2006.