Industry | Petroleum industry |
---|---|
Founded | 1953 |
Founder | Alden J. "Doc" Laborde John Hayward |
Defunct | 1992 |
Fate | Acquired by Diamond Offshore Drilling |
Headquarters | New Orleans |
ODECO (Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company) was an offshore drilling company. In 1992, it was acquired by Diamond Offshore Drilling.
In 1953, the company was founded by Alden J. "Doc" Laborde, who also founded Tidewater, and John Hayward. Hayward was the builder of the Barnsdall rig and holder of the patent on submersible drilling barge methodology. Charles Murphy Jr. of Murphy Oil invested $500,000 in the company and assisted Laborde in finding additional investors. [1]
Alexander Shipyard in New Orleans constructed the company's first rig, which was delivered in 1954 and immediately contracted to Shell Oil. The rig was named Mr.Charlie after Charles Murphy. Mr. Charlie was retired in 1986. [2]
After noticing the stability of submersible rigs when they were only partially submerged for relocation and the success of Shell's conversion of the Blue Water rig, Laborde designed and constructed the first purpose-built V-shaped semi-submersible drilling rig, Ocean Driller, delivered in 1963. [3]
In 1982, Ocean Ranger , one of the company's oil platforms, sank in a violent storm in Canadian waters east of Newfoundland, killing 84 people. [4] [5]
Also in 1982, the company took delivery of Odyssey . The rig suffered a blowout in 1988. [6]
In 1991, Murphy Oil acquired the company. [7]
In 1992, Diamond Offshore Drilling acquired the company from Murphy Oil for $358 million. [8]
An oil platform is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms will also have facilities to accommodate the workers, although it is also common to have a separate accommodation platform bridge linked to the production platform. Most commonly, oil platforms engage in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or float. In some arrangements the main facility may have storage facilities for the processed oil. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections. These sub-sea facilities may include one or more subsea wells or manifold centres for multiple wells.
Ocean Ranger was a semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit that sank in Canadian waters on 15 February 1982. It was drilling an exploration well on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, 267 kilometres (166 mi) east of St. John's, Newfoundland, for Mobil Oil of Canada, Ltd. (MOCAN) with 84 crew members on board when it sank. There were no survivors.
A semi-submersible platform is a specialised marine vessel used in offshore roles including as offshore drilling rigs, safety vessels, oil production platforms, and heavy lift cranes. They have good ship stability and seakeeping, better than drillships.
Alexander L. Kielland was a Norwegian semi-submersible drilling rig that, on 27 March 1980, capsized in the Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea, killing 123 people. The capsize was the worst disaster in Norwegian waters since the Second World War. The rig, located approximately 320 km east of Dundee, Scotland, was owned by the Stavanger Drilling Company of Norway and was on hire to the U.S. company Phillips Petroleum at the time of the disaster. The rig was named after the Norwegian writer Alexander Lange Kielland.
LP Odyssey is a self-propelled semi-submersible mobile spacecraft launch platform converted from a mobile drilling rig in 1997.
Transocean Ltd. is an American company. It is the world's largest offshore drilling contractor based on revenue and is based in Vernier, Switzerland. The company has offices in 20 countries, including Canada, the United States, Norway, United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Petrobras 36 (P-36) was at the time the largest floating semi-submersible oil platform in the world prior to its sinking on 20 March 2001. It was owned by Petrobras, a semi-public Brazilian oil company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. The cost of the platform was US$350 million.
A drillship is a merchant vessel designed for use in exploratory offshore drilling of new oil and gas wells or for scientific drilling purposes. In recent years the vessels have been used in deepwater and ultra-deepwater applications, equipped with the latest and most advanced dynamic positioning systems.
Valaris Limited is an offshore drilling contractor headquartered in Houston, Texas, and incorporated in Bermuda. It is the largest offshore drilling and well drilling company in the world, and owns 52 rigs, including 36 offshore jackup rigs, 11 drillships, and 5 semi-submersible platform drilling rigs.
Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. is an offshore drilling contractor. The company is headquartered in Katy, Texas, United States, and has major offices in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Scotland, Singapore, and Norway.
Songa Offshore SE is a European offshore drilling contractor founded in 2005 with offices in Cyprus, Stavanger, Oslo, Houston, Kuala Lumpur, Aberdeen, and Singapore.
Offshore drilling is a mechanical process where a wellbore is drilled below the seabed. It is typically carried out in order to explore for and subsequently extract petroleum that lies in rock formations beneath the seabed. Most commonly, the term is used to describe drilling activities on the continental shelf, though the term can also be applied to drilling in lakes, inshore waters and inland seas.
Ocean Rig UDW Inc. was an operator of semi-submersible oil platforms and underwater drillships and was based in Athens. In 2018, the company was acquired by Transocean.
Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and operated by BP. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, a blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, on 22 April, the Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest marine oil spill in history.
Noble Corporation plc is an offshore drilling contractor organized in London, England. Its affiliate, Noble Corporation, is organized in the Cayman Islands. It is the corporate successor of Noble Drilling Corporation.
The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum, located in Galveston, Texas, is a museum dedicated to the offshore oil and gas industry. Located next to the Strand National Historic Landmark District, the museum is housed on a retired jack-up rig set up in the Galveston harbor.
Deepwater drilling, or deep well drilling, is the process of creating holes in the Earth's crust using a drilling rig for oil extraction under the deep sea. There are approximately 3400 deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico with depths greater than 150 meters.
A submersible drilling rig is a marine vessel design that can be floated to location and lowered onto the sea floor for offshore drilling activities.
The Ben Line or Ben Line Steamers, Limited was a Scottish shipping company based in Leith, Scotland founded in 1825 which was primarily involved in the Far East to Europe trade. A private company, it was largely owned by members of the Thomson family from Leith and the Mitchell family from Alloa.
Bennett Offshore, L.L.C., is an independent naval architecture, design and consulting firm founded in 1997 by William T. Bennett, Jr., to deliver engineering services to the offshore industry. Bennett headquarters are located in Houston, Texas, and the company has an engineering office in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bennett Offshore provides traditional naval architecture, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering as well as hydrodynamics and other marine- and offshore-related services. In addition, the firm is involved in design, modification, and construction supervision of marine vessels, liftboats and other offshore mobile drilling and production units. Bennett Offshore worked in collaboration with the Offshore Technology Development group of Keppel Offshore & Marine to design the ORCA series of self-propelled, self-elevating platforms.