Galliano company says it has built the world’s largest liftboat

What a Galliano company says is the world’s largest liftboat is now in the Gulf of Mexico. Typical liftboats measure about 80 feet wide and 130 feet long, with legs that measure up to 250 feet. The Liftboat Robert—which Montco Offshore christened last month at Port Fourchon—dwarfs them, at 135 feet wide, 290 feet long and with 335-foot legs. The vessel was built by Gulf Island Fabrication and Montco Offshore, the firm’s marine-construction subsidiary in Houma. Its owners say the size of the vessel will enable it to cut the time needed for dismantling rigs and platforms that have finished exploring for or producing oil, a process known as decommissioning. The decommissioning of a rig includes three phases, which typically take about 10 to 14 days to complete. But because the Liftboat Robert has four times the worker capacity of a typical liftboat—able to comfortably house 132 offshore workers—company officials are hoping to halve the decommissioning time. “We’ve built a boat big enough that all three phases can be there at once to safely work in parallel, do simultaneous operations and get it done sooner,” says Joe Orgeron, Montco’s chief technology officer.