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Transocean rig surpasses 40,000 feet
Ray Tyson For Petroleum News
Transocean’s jack-up GSF Rig 127 set a world record for the longest extended-reach well ever drilled to a measured depth of 40,320 feet with a 35,770-foot horizontal section, Transocean said. The well was recently drilled offshore Qatar in 36 days and incident-free, the company added, noting that the new record of 7.6 miles also was the first well in the history of offshore drilling that exceeded 40,000 feet.
Beat old record by 2,000 feet
The well surpassed by roughly 2,000 feet the prior extended-reach record of 38,322 feet measured depth set by another drilling contractor with a land rig drilling at Sakhalin Island earlier this year.
The rig’s crewmembers, working with the client, Maersk Oil Qatar AS, “overcame numerous constraints,” including high drilling torque throughout certain parts of the horizontal section, Transocean said.
The well (BD-04A) is in the Al-Shaheen field. In addition to staying focused on safe operations, crews used extensive deck-management planning and a supply boat to hold additional drill pipe so that the rig could stay within its variable deck load rating.
“Everyone involved deserves congratulations for coming together and through great planning and teamwork managing the challenges on this well in an incident-free manner,” said Jim Granger, Transocean’s performance rig manager.
Jack-up has just 2 mud pumps Making the record even more impressive is the fact that the Friede & Goldman L-780 Mod II design jack-up, with a 250-foot water depth capability, operates with just two Emsco FB 1600 mud pumps. Other equipment includes the rig’s 2,000-horsepower National 1320 UE Drawworks, and a Varco TDS-4S top drive.
In addition to its record-setting performance, GSF Rig 127 crews last April reached one year without a lost-time injury, the company noted.
Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling company, owns or operates a contract drilling fleet of 39 high-specification floaters, 29 mid-water floaters, 10 high-specification jack-ups and 56 standard jack-ups.
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