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November 25, 2015

For further information, please contact:

Endre Johansen, Corporate Communications AS
Telephone: +47 41 61 06 05
Email: endre.johansen@corpcom.no

About ABL Group ASA

ABL Group (OSE: ABL Group ASA – ticker code “ABL”) is a leading independent global consultancy delivering energy, marine, engineering and digital solutions to drive safety and sustainability in renewables, maritime and oil & gas sectors. The group has offices in 39 countries worldwide and operates under four brands: ABL, OWC, Longitude and AGR.

LOC wins prestigious award for role in critical rig move

LOC’s Abu Dhabi office in the Middle East has won an award for its part in a complicated and challenging project to move a rig to a remote offshore oil field.

The award was presented at the prestigious ADIPEC conference (Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference) which ran from 9-12 November 2015.  It was presented jointly to the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA), National Drilling Company (NDC) and the project’s strategic partners LOC Middle East and DNV×GL Noble Denton.

The award was given in the ‘Best New Practice’ for new rig pre-loading procedures developed for difficult locations.

‘Shuweihat’ is a LT 116 E design drilling rig custom designed for use on deep drill wells. ADMA wanted to site the rig in a critical and remote field location. No drilling rig had been placed at this location for more than 30 years due to its unstable seabed conditions.

As a result of the cap rock being of varying thickness and strength laterally across the site both the initial and second penetration analyses indicated that the risk of punch through and/or rapid leg penetration was very high for all three legs.

On the basis of the penetration analysis and a Site Specific Assessment (SSA), the LOC Middle East marine warranty team along with DNV×GL’s geotechnical team and the ADMA / NDC crisis management team developed detailed procedures for completing site specific reduced pre-loading. The rig was subsequently safely placed on site meaning that the ADMA Ghasha Mega project could be established safely.

Paul Miles, Regional Director LOC Middle East and India says: “This was an incredibly complex manoeuvre, our thanks to the team in Abu Dhabi, particularly Cris Partridge, Peter van Gysen and Chris Mallet who all went above and beyond.”

“Their thorough analysis and extensive risk mitigation ensured that this important project was safely and expertly executed in very difficult, dangerous conditions.”

The detailed risk mitigation procedures developed for the ‘Shuweihat’ rig pre-loading have defined a generic new standard for pre-loading in highly challenging locations. The same procedures will now be used to develop best practice procedures in the future, allowing rigs to safely access ever more challenging oil and gas field locations in the Gulf region.

 

  • Cap rock is the harder, more resistant rock overlying a weaker rock or in this case, it is a non-permeable layer that traps the oil or gas underneath, creating a reservoir.
  • A ‘jack up rig’ has a hull, and floats onto location, the legs jack to the ocean bottom, and then jack the hull out of the water.
  • A rig like Shuweihat needs to be pre-loaded, which means driving the legs into the ocean bottom before the hull is completely jacked out of the water.  During this procedure the Jack up is at risk from weather and leg ‘punch-through’ ie. one leg breaks through the cap rock and the others bend, particularly if there’s a strong sea swell.