| Popis: |
The offshore drilling market is pushing for more cost efficiency, more efficient drilling packages and more safety and redundancy, but also have the desire to be able to drill and develop more complex wells in deeper water. New concepts and designs will be needed to meet these challenges and make drilling complex and deeper wells commercially attractive. A rig design solution to provide increased drilling efficiency is to set up the rig for full dual drilling featuring two fully equivalent well centers. This will combine the benefits of dual activity with additional rig flexibility and redundancy. In the existing configurations well centers are mostly not equivalent, as for example with the commonly used main or auxiliary hoist, specific operations are be limited to only one well center. When aiming for full interchangeable well center functionality, at all times full accessibility to both well centers is required, at drill floor level as well as in the moonpool. This arrangement does not exist on earlier or contemporary drillship designs. In general a drillship features ample deck space, but the vessel deck areas and the well centers are longitudinally arranged. This causes the forward well center to block access from the forward deck area to the aft well center, and vice versa. By breaking with traditional naval architectural thinking patterns, an innovative approach to the drilling process in a moonpool arrangement is introduced. It comprises a transversely oriented moonpool, named the Euryale moonpool concept. The Euryale concept allows the well centers to be transversely arranged, and thus providing the right accessibility to both well centers on the drill floor as well as in the moonpool from forward and aft deck areas, ensuring all advantages of full dual drilling and full redundancy on a drillship. The (patent pending) Euryale moonpool features not only full dual drilling accessibility, it also mitigates sloshing motion in the moonpool during transit due to the significantly reduced length of the moonpool. The calm water in the moonpool not only creates a safer working environment for high value equipment and personnel, it saves fuel cost and reduces emissions as well. The Euryale moonpool is integrated in the ship's structure ensuring the overall integrity of the drillship, and does not contain any failure sensitive underwater mechanical parts nor protruding parts in the moonpool that might impose damage on the deployed riser. A patent has been applied for the Euryale moonpool. |
