Woodside multi-purpose semisub plan advances

Innovative step: Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman

BLOOMBERG

By Tan Hwee Hwee and Xu Yihe from Singapore

 19 July 2012 22:59 GMT

AUSTRALIA independent Woodside Petroleum has returned to the drawing board to develop a multi-purpose semi-submersible rig with built-in capacity for drilling and pipelay operations to support the development of oil and gas fields off Western Australia.

Woodside is understood to have pressed on with a plan first floated two to three years ago to build a specialised rig capable of functioning as an independent semisub as well as perform tender assist drilling operations.

The innovative concept has been advanced into a new rig design extended to provide for pipelay capabilities.

The specialised drilling unit will be built to the newly minted TADS 2000 DP design, which some sources suggested shares common characteristics with the GustoMSC TDS 2500 rig design.

The three-column dynamically positioned semisub will initially be completed as a…

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