This application is a Non-Provisional application of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/359,573, entitled “Removable Drill Floor”, filed Jul. 7, 2016, which is herein incorporated by reference.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Advances in the petroleum industry have allowed access to oil and gas drilling locations and reservoirs that were previously inaccessible due to technological limitations. For example, technological advances have allowed drilling of offshore wells at increasing water depths and in increasingly harsh environments, permitting oil and gas resource owners to successfully drill for otherwise inaccessible energy resources. However, as wells are drilled at increasing depths, additional components may be utilized to, for example, control and or maintain pressure at the wellbore (e.g., the hole that forms the well) and/or to prevent or direct the flow of fluids into and out of the wellbore. One component that may be utilized to accomplish this control and/or direction of fluids into and out of the wellbore is a blowout preventer (BOP).
BOPs tend to be large structures that consume a substantial amount of space. To deploy and retrieve the BOPs, typically there must be sufficient space between a moon pool and a drill floor of an offshore vessel to position the BOP for deployment and/or to retrieve the BOP for storage or maintenance. Moreover, as large offshore equipment (e.g., BOPs) increase in size, there may be an inadequate amount of distance between the moon pool and the drill floor of an offshore vessel to deploy and retrieve the equipment. One solution may be to raise the drill floor of the offshore vessel. However, this solution may negatively affect the center of gravity of the offshore vessel.
One or more specific embodiments will be described below. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, all features of an actual implementation may not be described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers' specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.
When introducing elements of various embodiments, the articles “a,” “an,” “the,” and “said” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements.
Systems and techniques for removal of a section of a drill floor of an offshore vessel are set forth below. Subsea equipment has grown in size. Accordingly, the limited space between the top of a drill floor and a V-door of the derrick provides a height restriction that does not allow for launching subsea equipment from above drill floor. Additionally, the distance between a moon pool below the drill floor and the bottom of the drill floor can operate as a restriction to the size of equipment that may be disposed or retrieved from a vertical position over the wellhead of a wellbore. Accordingly, through removal of a section of the drill floor, additional space between the moon pool and the V-door may be achieved to allow for large equipment to be disposed or retrieved from a vertical position over the wellhead of a wellbore. Additionally, removal of a section of the drill floor allows for placement of the larger equipment in a desired position without an associated increase in the height of the drill floor, for example, from the deck of the offshore vessel.
The section of removable drill floor may include one or more portions that may be moved from a closed position (in which the drill floor is enclosed) into an open position (in which the drill floor provides an opening in the enclosure of the drill floor). This may be accomplished, for example, through sliding of one or more portions of the drill floor from the closed position to the open position. Thus, the drill floor may include an immovable section having a first portion of a surface area of the drill floor and at least one moveable section comprising a second portion of the surface area of the drill floor, such that when in the closed position, a full surface area of the drill floor is provided and when in the open position, a portion of the surface area of the drill floor equal to the surface area of the moveable section is removed from the total area of the drill floor. Control of the operation of the drill floor (e.g., the removal and replacement of a section of the drill floor) may be accomplished through the use of a computing system.
With the foregoing in mind,
As illustrated in
During operation of the drillship 10, different equipment may be required to be placed in a location, for example, in a position over the wellbore to complete various operational tasks.
As illustrated in
Additionally, the drill floor 22 may include locking features 29 that may be disengaged, in some embodiments, as controlled by a computing system. These locking features 29 may include retractable pins, bolts, or the like that extend from one section (e.g., section 24) into apertures of a second section (e.g., section 26). Regardless of the configuration utilized, the locking features 29 operate to affix the sections 24 and 26 to one another when in the closed position illustrated in
As previously noted, an area 30 beneath the drill floor 22 and above the moon pool of the offshore vessel 10 may be inadequate to allow for the positioning of the offshore equipment into area 28 (e.g., an upper portion of the equipment to be deployed may be precluded from moving into area 28 via the drill floor 22 when it is in a closed position). Additionally, the distance between the top of a v-door 31 in the structure and the drill floor 22 may also be inadequate to allow for the positioning of the offshore equipment into area 28 when the drill floor 22 is in the closed position. Thus, sections 24 and 26 of the drill floor 22 may be moved from their illustrated closed position into a second (e.g., open position) via retraction mechanisms, which are discussed in greater detail below with respect to
To facilitate lateral movement of the sections 24 and 26 (e.g., to move sections 24 and 26 into an open position that allows for access to area 28 through the drill floor 22), one or more tracks 36 may guide sections 24 and 26 of the drill floor 22. The tracks 36 may be rails or similar guides that may interface, for example, with rollers or the like disposed beneath the sections 24 and 26. Additionally, one or more linear actuators 38 may be present to impart force to cause motion of the sections 24 and 26 along the tracks 36. In one embodiment, each linear actuator 38 may include a hydraulic cylinder or a similar actuator. In some embodiments, the operation of each linear actuator 38, as well as activation of the mechanical actuators 32, may be controlled by a computing system. For example, the sections 24 and 26 may each be moved by respective linear actuators 38 concurrently (as controlled by the computing system), such that movement of each section 24 and 26 is simultaneous (e.g., performed at a common speed). In this manner, the one or more linear actuators 38 may operate to extend and retract the sections 24 and 26 as required to allow for additional clearance of equipment passing through v-door 31.
Thus, the computing system 40 may include a processor 44 that may be operably coupled with the memory 42 to perform various algorithms. Such programs or instructions executed by the processor(s) 44 may be stored in any suitable article of manufacture that includes one or more tangible, computer-readable media at least collectively storing the instructions or routines, such as the memory 42. Additionally, the computing system 42 may optionally include a display 46, which may be a liquid crystal display (LCD) or other type of display, and allows users to view images generated by the computing system 40. The display 46 may include a touch screen, which may allow users to interact with a user interface of the computing system 40.
The computing system 40 may also include one or more input structures 48 (e.g., a keypad, mouse, touchpad, one or more switches, buttons, or the like) to allow a user to interact with the computing system 40, for example, to start, control, or operate a GUI or applications running on the computing system 40 and/or to start, control, or operate the techniques to (laterally) move the sections 24 and 26 between the closed position and the open position, as well as the techniques to control the locking features 29, and techniques to vertically move top portion 34 of the sections 24 and 26. Additionally, the computing system 40 may include network interface 50 to allow the computing system 40 to interface with various other electronic devices. The network interface 50 may include a Bluetooth interface, a local area network (LAN) or wireless local area network (WLAN) interface, an Ethernet connection, or the like. The computer system 40, which may be a stand-alone unit, for example, adjacent to the derrick 11 or may be part of a larger control system of the drillship 10, may be utilized to control the process of removing a portion of the drill floor 22.
This written description uses examples to disclose the above description to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the disclosure, including making and using any devices or systems and performing any incorporated methods. The patentable scope of the disclosure is defined by the claims, and may include other examples that occur to those skilled in the art. Such other examples are intended to be within the scope of the claims if they have structural elements that do not differ from the literal language of the claims, or if they include equivalent structural elements with insubstantial differences from the literal languages of the claims. Accordingly, while the above disclosed embodiments may be susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and have been described in detail herein. However, it should be understood that the embodiments are not intended to be limited to the particular forms disclosed. Rather, the disclosed embodiment are to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the embodiments as defined by the following appended claims.
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