The Use of Self Erecting Tender Rigs for Improving the Economics of Marginal Fields

摘要

Self-Erecting Tender Rigs (SETR’s) have been used in SouthEast Asia, West Africa and the Middle East for 30 years fordrilling development wells from fixed platforms.Inherent in the SETR concept is that equipment required tosupport the drilling operation such as power, living quarters,etc, is located on the tender, while only equipment actuallyneeded for drilling such as the derrick, topdrive, BOP, etc areinstalled on the platform. Compared to the use of a platformrig the design load and required deck area of using an SETR isthus only about 1/4 of that needed for a platform rig ofcomparable capacity.So far tender rigs have mainly been used for developmentdrilling in water depths down to 800 ft. And this will mostlikely remain their main application also in the near term.However, with increased focus on use of dry completionsin deep water with the Xmas trees installed on a floatingplatform like a TLP or SPAR - the self-erecting tender rigconcept will present many benefits for field development alsoin deep water, particularly for marginal field development,where the field economics may depend on solutions usingsmall, remote controlled wellhead TLP’s.