DSM begins mooring ops for Deepsea Bergen rig

Deep Sea Mooring (DSM), a Vryhof company, has begun operations under the newly awarded contract for the provision of pre-lay mooring products and services to the Deepsea Bergen drilling rig on the NCS.

DSM said on Thursday that the Austrian oil and gas company OMV deployed the semi-submersible rig to support drilling activities in the region.

The company will coordinate its activities out of DSM’s equipment base in Mongstad, Norway. The pre-lay mooring equipment and services provided will include chain, fiber ropes, anchors, connectors, buoyancy, and handling equipment as well as mobilization and demobilization services.

The contract with OMV follows DSM’s successful provision of mooring services to the Island Innovator rig in 2017.

Dan Pedersen, Vryhof’s commercial director, said: “Today’s announcement reinforces Deep Sea Mooring’s position as the leading provider of mooring solutions on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.”

Deepsea Bergen is a third generation semi-submersible drilling rig of an Aker H-3.2 design, currently on contract to OMV at the Haltenbanken area, approximately 280 km north of Kristiansund with a water depth of 342 meters.

OMV hired the Deepsea Bergen back in April 2017. The contract was for one firm high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) well in production license 644 off Norway. The contract also included options for two additional HPHT wells on the NCS.

Work on the Iris/Hades exploration well began in late November and has an expected duration of approximately 90 days, excluding options.

Following the completion of work for OMV, the rig will begin its contract with Statoil which exercised its first option in the Deepsea Bergen rig’s drilling contract last December.

Namely, Statoil awarded the contract to the Deepsea Bergen rig in late May for drilling activities in 2018-2019. Start of operations under the first of four options for two firm wells with an estimated duration of 75 days will be in the first or second quarter of 2018, in direct continuation with the OMV drilling program.

Offshore Energy Today Staff