Lamprell’s Ian Anderson examines last year’s Macondo disaster and its effects on the world jackup market. On April 20th 2010 there was an incident in the Gulf of Mexico that would change the drilling world forever.
The location was the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon Block 252, about 66 kilometres off the Louisiana coast.
The Deepwater Horizon, a nine year old semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, owned by Transocean and under lease to BP, was drilling an exploratory well at approximately 5000 ft, when methane gas from the well, under high pressure, shot all the way up and out of the drill column onto the platform and then ignited and exploded.
The massive floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig with a capability of operating in up to 8000 ft and drilling down to 30 000 ft was engulfed in a blazing inferno and eventually sank to the ocean floor on April 22nd.
Eleven workers died and 17 were injured. On July 15th the wellhead was finally capped and the leak stopped, but only after an estimated 5 million barrels of crude oil had escaped into the ocean, contaminating surrounding coast lines , marine and wildlife habitats as well as inflicting extensive damage to the local tourism and fishing industries.
Thankfully in the Middle East we rarely exceed water depths of 150 feet and our jackups sit firmly on the seabed making for a safer, more controlled operation.
Much has been said as to the cause, the blame, the lessons learnt, and new regulations. The sheer magnitude of this disaster has definitely had a knock on effect throughout the global drilling community.
It is common knowledge that on a drilling rig, you can never have too much space or too much power , these two vital elements result in a safer operation, hence the recent spate of newbuild orders are for the larger , more capable, high spec. units.
At the annual Pareto Oil & Offshore conference in Olso, Norway last September, where we were reminded that one of the three new words in the drilling industry was Macondo, the other two, incidentally, were Volcanic ash and Double dipping.
The Macondo incident was the topic of everyone’s conversation and various industry speakers (mostly bankers and analysts) all echoed the same sentiments, that we must start stacking and scrapping the older, smaller units and start a new order boom based on the larger high spec. more powerful, safer rigs.
Everybody nodded in agreement, especially the shipyards of course, but the world was just recovering from a serious recession and financing new builds seemed a distant dream for many of the drilling companies, most of whom had units cold stacked around the globe.
So here we are today, with a worldwide fleet of around 470 jackups. We see 75 older units stacked, 25 of those in the Middle East, and orders for new high spec. jack ups being announced almost daily.
The Lamprell UAE Yards currently have seven high spec units under construction with more orders under negotiation.
Maybe we did learn something from Macondo after all.
Staff Writer
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Macondo Impact: How it changed offshore thinking
Lamprell’s Ian Anderson examines industry implications of the tragedy
Lamprell’s Ian Anderson examines last year’s Macondo disaster and its effects on the world jackup market. On April 20th 2010 there was an incident in the Gulf of Mexico that would change the drilling world forever.
The location was the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon Block 252, about 66 kilometres off the Louisiana coast.
The Deepwater Horizon, a nine year old semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, owned by Transocean and under lease to BP, was drilling an exploratory well at approximately 5000 ft, when methane gas from the well, under high pressure, shot all the way up and out of the drill column onto the platform and then ignited and exploded.
The massive floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig with a capability of operating in up to 8000 ft and drilling down to 30 000 ft was engulfed in a blazing inferno and eventually sank to the ocean floor on April 22nd.
Eleven workers died and 17 were injured. On July 15th the wellhead was finally capped and the leak stopped, but only after an estimated 5 million barrels of crude oil had escaped into the ocean, contaminating surrounding coast lines , marine and wildlife habitats as well as inflicting extensive damage to the local tourism and fishing industries.
Thankfully in the Middle East we rarely exceed water depths of 150 feet and our jackups sit firmly on the seabed making for a safer, more controlled operation.
Much has been said as to the cause, the blame, the lessons learnt, and new regulations. The sheer magnitude of this disaster has definitely had a knock on effect throughout the global drilling community.
It is common knowledge that on a drilling rig, you can never have too much space or too much power , these two vital elements result in a safer operation, hence the recent spate of newbuild orders are for the larger , more capable, high spec. units.
At the annual Pareto Oil & Offshore conference in Olso, Norway last September, where we were reminded that one of the three new words in the drilling industry was Macondo, the other two, incidentally, were Volcanic ash and Double dipping.
The Macondo incident was the topic of everyone’s conversation and various industry speakers (mostly bankers and analysts) all echoed the same sentiments, that we must start stacking and scrapping the older, smaller units and start a new order boom based on the larger high spec. more powerful, safer rigs.
Everybody nodded in agreement, especially the shipyards of course, but the world was just recovering from a serious recession and financing new builds seemed a distant dream for many of the drilling companies, most of whom had units cold stacked around the globe.
So here we are today, with a worldwide fleet of around 470 jackups. We see 75 older units stacked, 25 of those in the Middle East, and orders for new high spec. jack ups being announced almost daily.
The Lamprell UAE Yards currently have seven high spec units under construction with more orders under negotiation.
Maybe we did learn something from Macondo after all.
Staff Writer
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and... More by Staff Writer
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