Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Southwest Kinsale Gasfield

PSE Kinsale Energy advises that it is engaging in works to decommission subsea wells at the Southwest Kinsale, Seven Heads and Ballycotton gasfields from this week for the next eight months.

Weather depending, advance works were set to begin between today, Monday 22 and Wednesday 24 March ahead of the arrival of the work vessel Stena Spey next month.

Stena Spey (callsign GCWP) is a Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) which will be first deployed to the Southwest Kinsale Gasfield for a period of some 90 days, where it will be positioned using eight pre-laid anchors, before moving on to the Seven Heads field.

Anchor handling vessels MV Maersk Maker (callsign OZGO2) and MV Maersk Marine (callsign OWGQ2) will accompany the Stena Spey throughout the well abandonment campaign.

Other work vessels of note are the ad-hoc anchor handling vessel MV Maersk Lancer (callsign OUHX2) and standby vessel MV VOS Pathfinder (callsign 2ALO7). All will listen on VHF Channel 16 throughout the operation.

Further details on the campaign, including the locations of rigs and anchor positions, are included in Marine Notice No 12 of 2021, a PDF of which can be downloaded below.

Published in News Update

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.