Atlantia
-- Half Billion Dollar Success Story
Atlantia Offshore Limited, located in Houston, Texas, received
one DOE SBIR Phase I and Phase II award to develop a tension leg platform
concept for use in developing oil and gas reserves in deep water.
Formerly known as Atlantia Corporation, this engineering firm developed
the SeaStar as a result of the DOE funded work.
The SeaStar is designed to operate in water depths up to 10,000 feet,
thus allowing the oil and gas development of new United States offshore fields
in the Gulf of Mexico. The first two
platforms were sold to British Borneo, and a third was sold to Chevron Texaco in
1999. These first three SeaStars
were 58’ in diameter with a 3000-4000 ton payload and were built entirely in
the United States. In 2001, Atlantia
signed a contract for a larger Gulf of Mexico SeaStar, 84’ diameter hull and
11000-12000 tons payload, sold to TotalFinaElf.
Cumulative sales of the four platforms is over $500 million.
The company is now developing designs for even larger SeaStars with
payloads in excess of 25,000 tons.
In July 2001, Atlantia was acquired by IHC Caland and became sister company to SBM who has a strong international focus. Currently Atlantia is working with a major oil company for applying its SeaStar technology for offshore West Africa. The four SeaStar platforms already built by Atlantia enable production and royalty payments to the Federal Government of an estimated $100 million per year.