AMURIYAH SALVAGE PROJECT - Deep Hydrografie en Geofysica
Amuriyah Salvage project

In January 1991, an Iraqi tanker sunk near Bubiyan Island, off the coast of Kuwait, by air-delivered bombing during Operation Desert Storm. Twenty-three years later, The 82,000-tonne Very Large Crude Oil Carrier (VLCC) Amuriyah has been refloated by a salvage team of KOOLE Contractors and moved away from the area.

 

VLCC Amuriyah had to be removed because South Oil Company (SOC) intended to install a Single Mooring Point (SMP-5) and oil offloading buoy at Iraq’s Al Basrah Oil Terminal, close to the position of the wreck. The vessel presented a potential hazard to tankers and other vessels mooring at or maneuvering close to the buoy.

 

To investigate the wreck and seabed surrounding the wreck, Deep provided KOOLE Contractors a bathymetric survey using a High Resolution R2Sonic 2024 multibeam echosounder. During the survey special attention was made to fully ensonify the Amuriyah in order to obtain high resolution multibeam sounding of the wreck. This resulted in a detailed 3-D model.

 

After the Amuriyah wreck and surrounding area was cleared, the wreck was refloated by KOOLE Contractors in two sections and moved away from the area. To finalize the salvage works, Deep provided a detailed marine survey to investigate the conditions of the ship wreck. Objectives of this survey were to provide an “as is” situation of the wreck site and the surrounding area. This survey generated high resolution images of the seabed and possible objects or debris on the seabed to assess satisfactory clearance of the Amuriyah wreck site area.[:]

Category
Salvage
Tags
high resolution survey, positioning services, salvage, salvage project, ship wreck, wreck