Company Overview

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2013

Company Overview [Abstract]

Company Overview

Note 2 — Company Overview 

We are an international offshore energy company that provides specialty services to the offshore energy industry, with a focus on growing well intervention and robotics operations.  In February 2013, we completed the sale of ERT, our former wholly-owned subsidiary that conducted our oil and gas operations in the U.S., for $624 million plus consideration in the form of overriding royalty interests in ERT’s Wang well and certain other of its future exploration prospects.  We used $318.4 million of the sales proceeds to reduce our indebtedness under our Credit Agreement (Note 7) and we are using the remainder in our continuingoperations, including supporting the expansion of our well intervention and robotics operations.

Contracting Services Operations

We seek to provide services and methodologies that we believe are critical to developing offshore reservoirs and maximizing production economics.  Our “life of field” services are segregated into four disciplines: well intervention, robotics, subsea construction and production facilities.  We have disaggregated our contracting services operations into two reportable segments: Contracting Services and Production Facilities.  Our Contracting Services segment includes well intervention, robotics and subsea construction operations (see below for disclosure regarding the planned dispositions of our remaining subsea construction vessels and related assets).  Our Production Facilities business includes our majority ownership of the Helix Producer I (“HP I”) vessel as well as our equity investments in Deepwater Gateway, L.L.C. (“Deepwater Gateway”) and Independence Hub, LLC (“Independence Hub”) (Note 6).  It also includes the Helix Fast Response System (“HFRS”), which includes access to our Q4000 and HP I vessels.

In October 2012, we entered into an agreement to sell our two remaining pipelay vessels, the Express and the Caesar, and other related pipelay equipment for a total sales price of $238.3 million, of which we have received a $50 million deposit that is only refundable in very limited circumstances.  The sales of these vessels are expected to close in July 2013 following the completion of each vessel’s backlog of work.

Discontinued Operations

In December 2012, we announced a definitive agreement for the sale of ERT.  On February 6, 2013, we sold ERT for$624 million plus consideration in the form of overriding royalty interests in  ERT’s Wang welland certain other of its future exploration prospects.  As a result, we have presented the assets and liabilities included in the sale of ERT and the historical operating results of our former Oil and Gas segment as discontinued operations in the accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements.  See Note 4 for additional information regarding our discontinued oil and gas operations.