World's Largest Jack-up Rig Named

In a ceremony held at the Keppel FELS shipyard in Singapore, the ultra harsh environment jack-up rig Maersk Intrepid was named in the presence of the Guest of Honour Mr Lui Tuck Yew, Minister for Transport in Singapore.

With a leg length of 206.8 m (678 ft) the rigs are the world’s largest jack-up rigs and are designed for year round operation in the North Sea, in water depths up to 150 m (492 ft).

Maersk Intrepid, named by Karen Tiffen, wife of Martin Tiffen, Managing Director of Total E&P Norge AS, is the first in a series of four ultra harsh environment jack-up rigs to enter Maersk Drilling’s rig fleet. The four jack-up rigs represent a total investment of USD 2.6bn. The first three jack-up rigs, including Maersk Intrepid, will be delivered from the Keppel FELS shipyard in 2014-2015, and the fourth will be delivered from the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard in South Korea in 2016.

After delivery from the yard, Maersk Intrepid will mobilize to the North Sea and commence a four year firm contract with Total E&P Norge AS for drilling the demanding and complex wells on the Martin Linge field development in the Norwegian North Sea. The contract includes four one-year options. The estimated contract value for the firm contract is USD 550 million.

Maersk Drilling explain that uptime and drilling efficiency are maximised through dual pipe handling in the new rig. While one string is working in the well bore, a second string of e.g. casing, drill pipe or bottom hole assembly can be assembled/disassembled and stored in the set-back area, ready for subsequent transfer for use in the well bore thus reducing the non-productive time.

The drill floor features Multi Machine Control - a fully remote operated pipe handling system allowing all standard operations such as stand building and tripping to be conducted without personnel on the drill floor thus ensuring a high level of consistency across crews and an improved efficiency.

 www.maerskdrilling.com