For a drillship to transit the Bosporus Strait, it must adhere to a maximum air draft limit of 58 metres to avoid striking one of the two bridges that span the channel. What makes this difficult is that most drilling derricks sitting atop drillships are much taller. Those derricks must be completely disassembled and reassembled, a process that can take as long as three months.
A little off the top
A recent journey through the Bosporus Strait put the partially removable drilling tower on Noble Corporation’s Globetrotter II to the test. Jennifer Pallanich reports on the innovative feature that let the rig make the journey from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea in a fraction of the time it takes conventional floaters.
9 October 2015 0:00 GMT
Updated
9 October 2015 0:00 GMT