Rig Classification
1. List the different type of rigs you can be working on?
The rigs classified into two types: land rigs and offshore rigs.
Offshore rigs:
Swamp barge – water depth less than 6 m.
Jacket rig with tender for shallow waters.
Jack-up rigs for water depth less than 110 m.
Semi-submersible rigs – usually anchored over the hole.
Drill ships – for very deep waters.
2. Explain the main differences between jack-up and
floater rigs?
The main differences between Jack-up and floater rigs are the Jack-up rig is
fixed rig while the floater rig is floating rig. The other difference is the
floater rig can work in deep water while the Jack-up rig has limited depth.
LAND RIGS
Land rigs look much alike, although details vary. A major difference is their size, and size determines
how deep the rig can drill. Well depths range from a few hundred or thousand feet (metres) to tens of
thousands of feet (metres).
Rig Size Maximum Drilling
Depth, Feet
(Metres)
Light duty 3,000-5,000
(1,000-1,500)
Medium duty 4,000-
10,000
(1,200-3,000)
Heavy duty 12,000-
16,000 (3,500-
5,000)
Very heavy duty 18,000-25,000+
(5,500-7,500+)
MOBILE OFFSHORE RIGS
A widely used offshore drilling rig is a mobile ojfshore drilling unit, or MOD U
Another is a platform. Although drilling occurs from platforms, companies mainly employ
them on the producing side of the oil and gas business.
MODU
Bottom supported units Floating units
Submersibles Semisubmersibles
Posted barges Drill ships
Bottle types
Arctic types
Inland barges
Jackups
Bottom-Supported Units
Submersibles and jackups contact the seafloor when drilling. The lower part of a submersible's
structure rests on the sea-floor. In the case of jackups, only the legs contact the seafloor
Submersibles
A submersible MODU floats on the water's surface when moved from one drilling site to
another. When it reaches the site, crew members flood compartments that submerge the
lower part of the rig to the seafloor. With the base of the rig in contact with the ocean
bottom, wind, waves, and currents have little effect on it.
Bottle-Type Submersibles
So, naval architects designed bottle-type submersibles. A bottle-type rig has four tall steel
cylinders (bottles) at each corner of the structure. The main deck lies across several steel
supports and the bottles. The rig and other equipment are placed on the main deck. When
flooded, the bottles cause the rig to submerge to the seafloor
Today, jackups have largely replaced them; jackups are less expensive to build than bottle-types
and can drill in deeper water.
Arctic Submersibles
A special type of submersible rig is an arctic submersible. In the arctic, where petroleum
deposits lie under shallow oceans such as the Beaufort Sea, oil companies knew that jackups
and conventional barge rigs would not be suitable. During the arctic winter, massive
chunks of ice form and then move with currents on the water's surface. Called "floes,"
these moving ice blocks exert tremendous force on any object they contact. The force is
great enough to destroy the legs of a jackup or the hull of a conventional ship or a barge.
Arctic submersibles therefore have a reinforced hull, a caisson. One type of caisson
has a reinforced concrete base on which the drilling rig is installed (fig. 29). When the sea
is ice-free in the brief arctic summer, boats tow the submersible to the drilling site. There, workers
submerge the caisson to the sea bottom and start drilling. Shortly, when ice floes form and begin
to move, the arctic submersible's strong caisson hull deflects the floes, enabling operations to
continue.
Jackups
A j ackup rig is a widely used mobile offshore drilling
unit. It floats on a barge hull when towed to the
drilling location (fig. 31). Most modern jackups have
three legs with a triangular-shaped barge hull; others
have four or more legs with rectangular hulls. A
jackup's legs can be cylindrical columns, somewhat
like pillars (fig. 32), or they can be open-truss structures,
which resemble a mast or a derrick
Inland Barge Rigs
A fourth submersible is an inland barge rig. It has a barge hull—a flat-bottomed, flat-sided,
rectangular steel box. The rig builder places a drilling rig and other equipment on the barge deck (fig.
30). Inland barge rigs normally drill in marshes, bays, swamps, or other shallow inland waters. By
definition, barges are not self-propelled; they have no built-in power to move them from one site to
another. Therefore, boats tow them to the drilling location. When being moved, the barge floats on
the water's surface; then, when positioned at the drilling site, the barge is flooded so that it rests on
the bottom ooze. Since they often drill in swampy shallow waters, drilling people often call inland barges
"swamp barges."