Fincantieri: Designing the Drillship of the Future

Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri is introducing a new ultra-deep drillship design at OMC Technical conference today, named the Proxima.

The drillship features a maximum drilling depth of 50,000ft in 12,000ft of water.

Differing from traditional drilling towers, its new drilling system is composed of two cyllindrically shaped telescopic towers increasing the vessel’s speed of drilling process.

World Maritime News spoke today with Mr Gianni Scherl, Chief Designer at Fincantieri Offshore Business Unit’ s Basic Design ahead of the official presentation of the design. The company is also exhibiting its drillship design: the Overdrill.

Prior to the start of the design process, the company conducted considerable research, meeting with a number of drill operators to seek feedback on what items are most valuable for this class of vessels.c

“The results showed that those were: safety, redundancy along with reliability of equipment and reduction of downtime in field operations,” Mr Scherl explained.

According to him, the present fleet of drillships is capable of going in up to 10,000 ft of water depth and boasts 40,000 maximum depth of drilling. On the other hand, Fincantieri’s design targets 50,000 ft maximum drilling depth and 12,000 ft of water depth.

Mr Scherl said that even though it might seem a small improvement when compared to the existing fleet, the design will allow the new ships to receive the massive equipment like risers and MPD pressure control systems without having to undergo modifications.

Other perks offered in the design include,  accommodation for up to 250 people as opposed to current 180-200 people, capacity to receive two helicopters, double hull enabling greater protection to the vessel from damages along with enhanced safety solutions.

A particular feature introduced based on the feedback from industry players was increased general open deck space as contractors insisted that they need to have a lot of space for their daily operations.

According to Mr Scherl, Overdrill and Proxima have smaller hulls than the present fleet as a lot of equipment and machinery has been placed inside the vessel leaving the open decks free.

The design is not tailored for a specific customer, but can be adapted to a customer needs as there is enough room for adjustments.

The construction of this type of ship is estimated to take around 30 months from contract signing.

WMN: Have you presented the design to the oil companies and drilling contractors? What is their view?

Scherl: “Yes we have, particularly to oil majors based in the USA but also in Europe such as Transocean, Ensco, Shell, British Petroleum, Saipem and Statoil. They were very enthusiastic. This was very important for us to get their feedback on the design in order to check if the focus points have been achieved with the new design.”

WMN: Drilling contractors are facing tough times due to rigs oversupply, low dayrates, cuts in spending by E&P players (all due to low oil prices). Will this affect the construction of Proxima?

Scherl: “Absolutely yes. In the last year we faced reduction in orders for this kind of ships. There was a boom evident in 2010 -2011 when many orders of this kind of ships were placed at yards in Korea without a contract for a drill contractor as the industry players believed that once the ships are built they will have enough demand. Now, many of these orders are cancelled. The day-rate of the present fleet of the market is brought down.

This means that investment in this kind of ships in addition to all kind of offshore equipment has suffered a downfall as well.”

World Maritime News Staff