Deepwater semi-submersible

North Atlantic Drilling, an offshore drilling contractor, is set to purchase two GE oil and gas blowout preventer (BOP) control systems.

By purchasing the two SeaONYXTM control systems, the company plans to upgrade control spreads on board its semi-submersible West Venture and drill ship West Navigator.

According to GE, the SeaONYX BOP control system, which is built upon GE’s Mark VIe architecture, incorporates multiple redundancies and hot-swappable components, and extends system availability to keep operations online.

SeaONYX is claimed to have an improved uptime performance compared to other controllers and is said to be a keystone of GE’s predictive drilling management technology, helping drillers to address issues prior to their occurance.

"Blowout preventers are used to isolate pressure in oil and gas wells during drilling or close the well entirely during emergencies."

GE oil and gas drilling systems president Chuck Chauviere said: "Once SeaONYX is on board, the architecture is in place to incorporate a broad array of monitoring and intelligent systems that have the potential to virtually eliminate unplanned downtime.

"Adding RamTel Plus provides detailed information on the ram BOP’s functionality, while the drilling iBox can model this data to predict future performance. Armed with this data, the drilling contractor can plan condition-based maintenance at service intervals based around the drilling schedule."

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Blowout preventers are used to isolate pressure in oil and gas wells during drilling or close the well entirely during emergencies.

Available as an upgrade to existing GE BOP controllers, the SeaONYX BOP control system is included in all new GE oil and gas BOP stacks for floating drilling rigs.


Image: Deepwater semi-submersible West Venture. Photo: courtesy of North Atlantic Drilling Ltd.

Energy