Maersk Drilling has taken delivery of its third ultra harsh environment jack-up, XLE-3, from the Keppel FELS shipyard in Singapore ahead of schedule. Maersk says that the rig will start its mobilization to the Norwegian North Sea in late February where she will, after arrival, start a contract of four years firm with 2×1 year options with Statoil for development drilling on the Gina Krog field in the Norwegian North Sea.
The rig, which will be named at a ceremony in Singapore in February, is the third in a series of four newbuild ultra harsh environment jack-up rigs to enter Maersk Drilling’s rig fleet in 2014-16. The four jack-up rigs represent a total investment of $2.6bn. The first three jack-up rigs have now been delivered from the Keppel FELS shipyard, and the fourth will be delivered from the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard in South Korea in 2016.
The new ultra harsh environment XL jack-ups
With a leg length of 206.8 m (678 ft.) the rigs are the world’s largest jack-up rigs and are designed for year round operation in the North Sea, in water depths up to 150 m (492 ft.), Maersk says in the press release. Uptime and drilling efficiency are maximised through dual pipe handling. While one string is working in the well bore, a second string of e.g. casing, drill pipe or bottom hole assembly can be assembled/disassembled and stored in the set-back area, ready for subsequent transfer for use in the well bore thus reducing the non-productive time. The drill floor features Multi Machine Control – a fully remote operated pipe handling system allowing all standard operations such as stand building and tripping to be conducted without personnel on the drill floor thus ensuring a high level of consistency across crews and an improved efficiency.