Thread: Troll oil platform

You can see why petrol prices are so high.
There's obviously not much money in this oil business.

Great pics Simon.

Thanks.


Ben.

I'm not really sure I can get my head around contructing something like that then moving it into place!

How does something like that weather the North Sea storms? To my mind it would be an 'interesting' experience to be out on one!

Anthony

Hi Anthony

One answer is they don't always get it right. The Norwegians dropped a concrete platform in one of the fjords, when they sent down a remote vehicle to see what was left, it was just a pile of concrete.

offshore platforms are much more flexible than buildings. Buildings can only deflect by a small amount (0.5 degrees comes to mind?) otherwise all the inhaitants start to feel sick. Offshore fixed platforms move up to 2 degrees, which makes them withstand the storms better by there's not many things as scaring as waking up in the middle of the night with the platform shaking.

Simon

West Tuna and Bream A Platforms in Bass Strait are both gravity based concrete platforms of similar construction to Troll.

Originally Posted by Ben from Vic.

You can see why petrol prices are so high.
There's obviously not much money in this oil business.

There's big money in the oil business....my day rate just went up by 15% and in a few months Ill be naming my own rates.

Returns can be high in the oil exploration game but capital outlay and risks are also high. Im curently sitting out on a semi-sub rig on a US$85,000/day day rate. Thats a base day rate. By the time you add in all the service personnel and other services youre looking at all up daily costs of about $250,000. Budget for the well were drilling here is about Aus$15 million but by the time we finish actual cost will be about Aus$21 million.

This rig is fairly cheap in comparison to some of the deep water rigs like the jack Ryan which command base day rates of $US300,000/day and up.

Cheers Martin

Excuse my ignorance. How do these things work? Are they massive floats which send a drill down or do they actually sit on the sea bed? What is the maximum depth of water they can operate in?

Originally Posted by zenwood

Excuse my ignorance. How do these things work? Are they massive floats which send a drill down or do they actually sit on the sea bed? What is the maximum depth of water they can operate in?

The structure in the pics is a production platform. It sits on the seafloor. if any drilling is planned theyd either bring in a platform drilling rig and mount it on the deck of the platform or alternately they can park a jack up rig along side and then extend the drilling derrick out over the platform on a cantilever (drilling package).

Offshore drilling rigs are either floaters or non floaters. Floating rigs include semi submersible rigs or drillships. Theyre maintained on location by either anchors or thrusters controlled by a satellite navigation system.

Non floating rigs include jackups which usually have three legs that get jacked down to the seabed elevating the hull of the rig above the water (up to 50m+ above Sealevel). Platform rigs are the other type of non floaters.

Water depth limits range from circa 100m for an older smaller jackup to 3000 m for a modern dynamically positioned drillship or semisub.

Limits on water depth are mainly length of anchor chain for anchored rig and for dynamically positioned rig it would be the amount of riser the rig can handle.

Hope that all isnt too technical for you.