A gathered crowd braved the soaring May temperatures at Abu Dhabi’s Port Zayed this morning to witness the official launch of the Lone Star semi-submersible drilling rig, built in Abu Dhabi’s very own Mussafah industrial yard and completed on site at Port Zayed.
The rig was accepted by its new owners, Queiroz Galvão Óleo e Gás, and will join the company’s fleet of six onshore oilrigs, four conventional and two helicopter type rigs, three semi-submersible oilrigs and a partnership with a FPSO vessel.
CEO of the IMCC Group, Fritz Hofbauer explained the engineering acheivement. “She is built to work in 2000 metres of water, to face 110 km/hour wind conditions, and waves roughly the size of a five storey building. The combined thrusters keeping her on station represent 25,000 horsepower.”
Wishing the rig well in its duties offshore Brazil (she has been signed to Petrobras on a seven year contract), was Bernard Van Legello, President of SBM Offshore.
“May she never drill a dry hole – Good luck Lone Star!” he said.
The Lone Star semi-submersible rig is a massive drilling unit designed with state of the art equipment suitable for drilling, work over (completion and intervention), exploration as well as development drilling.
Lone Star was designed to operate in environmental conditions of the Gulf of Mexico, West Africa, Brazil and similar conditions up to 7,880 ft. (2.400 m) water depth, and can drill up to 24,600 ft. (7.500 m) with a variable drilling load of up to 6,470 ton (7,131 sh ton).
The environment conditions of Campos Basin were emphasized during design in order to ensure that the vessel surpass the requirements for the operations in the Brazilian offshore.
The vessel is designed to keep station with eight azimuth thrusters utilizing a dynamic positioning system to meet ABS Class requirements for DPS2 and Petrobras specification. The DP-system have been designed to keep the vessel on location according to the Campos Basin 1-year environmental conditions with the riser connected and under drilling operations.
SBMÂ Offshore led the project in conjunction with IMCC Group and Gulf Piping Co – the platform constructor yard.
