MSI's Cape Town office, which manages all projects in Africa, the Middle East, as well as Europe, was awarded the TOML measurement campaign contract to collect current and wave data at the company's conventional buoy mooring (CBM) facility, which is anchored offshore and serves as a mooring point for tankers to offload fluid products.

The main purpose of the CBM facility is to transfer fluid between onshore or offshore facilities and the moored tanker.

The CBM comprises an 18-inch pipeline between CBM and Ghana's sole oil refinery, Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).

"The data collected enabled the engineers to confirm that the wave direction as derived from the refraction modelling agrees reasonably well with the measured wave direction. The current measurements showed that the direction varies more frequently than expected from previous available data," states Bilski.

Project management company, Project Management International (PMI), with offices in South Africa and Ghana, was commissioned by TOML to propose measures to improve the operability of the petroleum import CBM facility.

MSI were subsequently contracted by PMI to conduct the measurement campaign at the CBM facility, which suffered from low-operability, reports the company.

Bilski says that the oceanographic measurement component of the project, valued at about $95 000, achieved the objective of providing sufficient data on which to base engineering design for the improved CBM reorientation.

MSI installed a 300 kHz acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) manufactured by water current measurements product manufacturer, Teledyne RD Instruments, to collect the current and wave data for the measurement campaign.

The ADCP unit was fitted with a double external battery canister to allow at least two months of uninterrupted data collection at a time, and all instruments were fitted inside a gimballed stainless-steel bottom frame.

MSI concluded the measurement campaign for TOML's CBM system in the last quarter of 2007, reports Bilski.

PMI's states that the re-orientation of the CBM facility is on track and 90% complete. The reorientated CBM facility is scheduled for commissioning before July 2008.

The company is currently involved in a range of oceanographic and meteorological measurement projects in the African region and this includes, Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar, Uganda and Gabon.

"These projects involve collecting current, wave and tide data in water depths ranging from 40 m to 1 600 m, as well as meteorological measurements," explains Bilski

He says that MSI's measurement programmes all form part of natural resource or coastal development projects, which run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"These are at various stages. For instance, some oil or gas projects are either in exploration stage or in production stage," adds Bilski.

He says that the projects in Mozambique and Gabon have just kicked off, while the projects in Madagascar and Uganda are about 50% complete, with the Angolan project being about 75% complete.

MSI has developed a notable African footprint since the company's inception in 2003, having since completed projects in South Africa, Kenya and Namibia, as well as other projects in the West African region, mentions Bilski.

The company continues to adds to its international footprint by securing contracts across the middle East, Europe and Africa.

"We have completed projects in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, the UK, Australia and India, and we are expecting additional work in Africa. In the short-term we are expecting projects from Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Angola," states Bilski.

He adds that the express aim of the company is to be the preferred met-ocean measurement service provider for the international oil and gas, coastal engineering, dredging markets.

"The company has expanded considerably since its inception in 2003, as we have since set up office in Australian in addition to our Cape Town office base. We foresee this growth continuing. Our areas of operations are moving increasingly into deeper waters," concludes Bilski.

By: Sylvester Haskins
from engineeringnews.co.za