doi:10.3850/978-981-08-9731-4_OSV2011-05

ABSTRACT

Offshore support vessels (OSVs) play a vital role in maintaining and supplying offshore oil and gas operations. In recent years, as the oil fields accessible by shallow water drilling have largely been exploited, there has been a firm trend of oil and gas companies moving into deeper waters (especially Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of Brazil and West Africa) in their search for oil and gas. There are also new deepwater discoveries in South-East Asia. Although there is no industry consensus in the definition deepwater oil fields, it is commonly refer to those beneath more than 300m of water. Much of these deepwater oil and gas fields lie in complex geologic formations, hidden beneath a mile or more of salt layers.

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