Drilling offshore for the 'black gold" or oil in the deepwater is one of the greatest technological breakthroughs in recent decades, and many new techniques have been developed to profit from the abundance of oil underneath the seabed. While offshore shallow water drilling has been around for hundreds of years in one form or the another, the effective extraction of petroleum from beneath the sea floor did not surface until the last forty years and more recent deepwater areas are high on the look out.. The search for oil often turns out to be unproductive, but this practice is vital for the economic future of many nations, some countries drilled for their own domestic consumption and some for export.
In order for any drilling to take place, an offshore drilling rig, ship or semi-submersible must first be deployed. These offshore vessels or MODU ( mobile offshore drilling units ) can be situated in water up to a several hundred meters to thousand meters in water depth. But before any drilling takes place, an oil and gas "trap" must first be located in the ocean, and with the ocean floor being at such great depths, the visibility is often very poor. To locate potential traps, engineers use seismic surveying, and then analyze the data they receive to decide whether or not drilling in the area would have the chance of containing oil and/or gas. The engineers will not know whether their assumptions are true until they penetrate the trap with a drill bit. Due to the fact that the traps can sometimes be a great distance below the ocean, advanced computer technology is required to guide the drill bit to a fixed location. Installed above the drill bit is a navigation device, which sends back information to the controller, also known as logging the well, allowing them to locate the exact location that is presumed to have the oil and to measure and monitor the trap. Inside the drill pipe, there is a steerable motor that can be controlled to adjust the drill and the direction in which it is headed.
Drilling Opn
Latest MODU designs are to make offshore drilling rigs and vessels much safer to operate in view of the recent accident and spill at the Gulf of Mexico while drilling and BP corporate image has somewhat suffered some setback. Offshore watchdogs, like USCG, etc, are now going to get tougher on violators and some redefining of offshore operation rules are looked at.
To make offshore drilling a little safer, extensive training would be mandatory for all of the worker on the rigs and platforms, which would reduce the number of spills due to human mistake or equipment faliure to operate under emergency situation. Furthermore, the technology in offshore drilling would need to be improved further, with new tools created that would eliminate the amount of pollutants released.
Marine biologists and researchers could perform a detailed study of the marine life in the surrounding area and attempt to design a rig that would be safer to the marine ecosystem and that could also be utilized by the marine life around the proposed area(s). Then they could use this new knowledge to make the existing rigs and platforms more eco-friendly.
Inspections of the rigs and platforms should continue, but the oil drilling companies should not be notified when the inspections will take place.
- The possibility of further pollution still exists
- The possibility of more offshore rigs being used is increased
- Oil companies would need to clean up their rigs and platforms to pass the inspections
- Some countries would no longer need to import oil, causing the supplying countries to lose money The right for the marine life to live a healthy and safe life still remains at risk
- Environmentalists worries would be put at ease (to an extent) knowing the rigs are safer Oil companies wouldn’t have to worry about being questioned for their actions
Rig Functions
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