Oceaneering to digitally transform Pacific Drilling’s rig fleet

Subsea engineering firm Oceaneering and offshore driller Pacific Drilling have entered into an industry-first, five-year digital services package agreement to digitally transform Pacific’s drilling fleet. 

Pacific Drilling drillships stacked in Las Palmas / Image by Rab Lawrence, Flickr – Shared under by 2.0
Pacific Drilling’s drillships stacked in Las Palmas / Image by Rab Lawrence, Flickr – Shared under the CC BY 2.0 license

Pacific Drilling said on Monday that this would allow the provision of emerging services such as remote ROV piloting, surveying, and automation aboard Pacific Drilling’s high-specification drillship fleet.

The collaboration between Oceaneering and Pacific Drilling aims to make the “Rig of the Future” a reality today. Pacific said that, with better, more reliable connectivity onboard Pacific Drilling’s vessels, customers can leverage data to make better decisions, faster. As a result of these efforts, Pacific Drilling’s customers can benefit from higher security, increased access and management of third parties as well as new and expanded digital services.

“We are delighted to work with Pacific Drilling to make the ‘Rig of the Future’ a reality,” said Kelly McDowell, Oceaneering’s Global Data Solutions Director.

“By choosing this integrated rig services package, Pacific and its customers can increase transparency as well as worker safety by leveraging our cross-functional team to maximize efficiency.”

Corey Thompson, CIO for Pacific Drilling, said, “Applying best-in-class IT technologies and services to Pacific Drilling’s deepwater fleet helps ensure we continually deliver timely solutions to our customers’ toughest challenges. Oceaneering is the right partner to help bring about the digital transformation of our assets, allowing us to engage with and service customers as never before. This strategic investment quadruples our bandwidth conduit, lowers latency in decision-making, and accelerates our technology road map.”

Oceaneering guarantees service level availability for industrial and mission-critical data backed by a combination of private LTE infrastructure and next generation satellite constellations, to deliver seamless rig-wide data connectivity. From origin to destination, Oceaneering will assume 100% accountability for network uptime and remote operations offshore.

The digital transformation will enable Oceaneering to provide remote piloting and automated control technology via dedicated, onshore mission support centers currently in Stavanger and Houston, and future centers.


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