Underwater Drilling Rig for Offshore Geotechnical Explorations for Oil & Gas Structures

摘要

High quality sampling of the sea floor is the basis for geotechnical investigations within the offshore industry. In order to bridge the gap between the use of expensive drill ships and simple sampling tools like a gravity corer, the MeBo was developed as a new sea floor drill rig. The manuscript presents and describes some case histories of the MeBo. Th is drill rig is capable of sampling soft sediments and hard rocks down to 80 m at the sea floor. It can be operated in water depths up to 2000 m. The MeBo can be deployed from standard research vessels. Based on the MeBo, the second generation of the drill rig and its possible offshore applications for oil & gas are also briefly described.