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52-451: The airport was built in the 60's, with a grass runway, as logistical and technical support for the near Arbatax paper mill . The mill closed in 1986. In 1975, a 1,188-metre (3,898 ft) asphalt runway, a hangar and a control tower were built. Between 1986 and 1990, regional airline Air Sardinia managed the airport, offering flights to Olbia , Alghero and Cagliari and charters outside of Sardinia. The airfield closed in 1990. In 1993,

104-443: A rack and pinion gear system on each leg. A drillship is a maritime vessel that has been fitted with drilling apparatus. It is most often used for exploratory drilling of new oil or gas wells in deep water but can also be used for scientific drilling. Early versions were built on a modified tanker hull, but purpose-built designs are used today. Most drillships are outfitted with a dynamic positioning system to maintain position over

156-611: A well bay and a small process plant . They are designed to operate in conjunction with a static production platform which is connected to the platform by flow lines or by umbilical cable , or both. The Petronius Platform is a compliant tower in the Gulf of Mexico modeled after the Hess Baldpate platform, which stands 2,100 feet (640 m) above the ocean floor. It is one of the world's tallest structures . The Hibernia platform in Canada

208-449: A group of local entrepreneurs built a terminal and offered seasonal charter flights (June, July, September, October) with regional airlines with aircraft such as BAe 146 , Bombardier Q400 and ATR72 . Annual traffic reached 44,412 passengers in 1998 and 42,655 in 2004. After the runway extension to 1,442 metres (4,731 ft) in 2008 and modernisation of the terminal in 2010, the airport reopened in 2010 for Meridiana flights connecting

260-459: A mile-long wooden trestle with railway tracks into the sea at McFadden Beach on the Gulf of Mexico, placing a derrick at its end – this was later destroyed by a hurricane. In 1945, concern for American control of its offshore oil reserves caused President Harry Truman to issue an Executive Order unilaterally extending American territory to the edge of its continental shelf, an act that effectively ended

312-412: A pile foundation supporting a conventional deck for drilling and production operations. Compliant towers are designed to sustain significant lateral deflections and forces, and are typically used in water depths ranging from 370 to 910 metres (1,210 to 2,990 ft). These platforms have hulls (columns and pontoons) of sufficient buoyancy to cause the structure to float, but of weight sufficient to keep

364-602: A storm in the North Sea with the loss of 123 lives. In 2001, Petrobras 36 in Brazil exploded and sank five days later, killing 11 people. Given the number of grievances and conspiracy theories that involve the oil business, and the importance of gas/oil platforms to the economy, platforms in the United States are believed to be potential terrorist targets. Agencies and military units responsible for maritime counter-terrorism in

416-480: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Arbatax Arbatax ( Italian pronunciation: [arbaˈtaks] ; Sardinian : Arbatassa ) is the largest hamlet ( frazione ) of Tortolì , Sardinia , in Italy with a population of almost 5,000 inhabitants. The origin of the name Arbatax is uncertain. According to tradition, it is derived from an Arabic word, which means "14th Tower", and refers to

468-469: Is a 4-column design that looks similar to a semisubmersible. Proprietary versions include the Seastar and MOSES mini TLPs; they are relatively low cost, used in water depths between 180 and 1,300 metres (590 and 4,270 ft). Mini TLPs can also be used as utility, satellite or early production platforms for larger deepwater discoveries. A GBS can either be steel or concrete and is usually anchored directly onto

520-491: 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 linked by bridge 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

572-433: Is approximately 488m long and 74m wide with displacement of around 600,000t when fully ballasted. A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water desalinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a floating platform or tanker loading facility, or both. Elements in

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624-415: Is one of the best sources for having floating production. The world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility is in production. See the section on particularly large examples below. TLPs are floating platforms tethered to the seabed in a manner that eliminates most vertical movement of the structure. TLPs are used in water depths up to about 2,000 meters (6,600 feet). The "conventional" TLP

676-442: Is required. During normal operations, PSVs (platform supply vessels) keep the platforms provisioned and supplied, and AHTS vessels can also supply them, as well as tow them to location and serve as standby rescue and firefighting vessels. Not all of the following personnel are present on every platform. On smaller platforms, one worker can perform a number of different jobs. The following also are not names officially recognized in

728-623: Is the Petrobras America Cascade FPSO in the Walker Ridge 249 field in 2,600 meters of water. Notable offshore basins include: Larger lake- and sea-based offshore platforms and drilling rig for oil. These platforms are built on concrete or steel legs, or both, anchored directly onto the seabed, supporting the deck with space for drilling rigs, production facilities and crew quarters. Such platforms are, by virtue of their immobility, designed for very long term use (for instance

780-561: Is the world's heaviest offshore platform, located on the Jeanne D'Arc Basin , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland . This gravity base structure (GBS), which sits on the ocean floor, is 111 metres (364 ft) high and has storage capacity for 1.3 million barrels (210,000 m ) of crude oil in its 85-metre (279 ft) high caisson. The platform acts as a small concrete island with serrated outer edges designed to withstand

832-537: Is used by ferries to and fro Civitavecchia and Olbia , and is also monopolized by the marine construction company Intermare, which builds gas rigs and vessels. The marina is one of the cheapest in Sardinia. The town is connected to Lanusei and Cagliari by a narrow gauge railway, today used for touristic purposes, owned by Ferrovie della Sardegna . The closest airport is the Tortolì Airport , about 4 km from

884-403: The 3-mile limit " freedom of the seas " regime. In 1946, Magnolia Petroleum (now ExxonMobil ) drilled at a site 18 miles (29 km) off the coast, erecting a platform in 18 feet (5.5 m) of water off St. Mary Parish, Louisiana . In early 1947, Superior Oil erected a drilling/production platform in 20 ft (6.1 m) of water some 18 miles off Vermilion Parish, Louisiana . But it

936-619: The Canadair aircraft, and helicopter rescue flights as well as aerospace experimentation with DASS (the Sardinian Aerospace District). No air traffic service or radio frequency are available. Pilots are required to submit PPR (Prior Permission Request, or Prior Permission Required) via a website form or phone call in advance. Contacts and operational data are available on the airport official website. This article about an airport in Italy

988-585: The Condeep concept, often have in-built oil storage in tanks below the sea surface and these tanks were often used as a flotation capability, allowing them to be built close to shore ( Norwegian fjords and Scottish firths are popular because they are sheltered and deep enough) and then floated to their final position where they are sunk to the seabed. Fixed platforms are economically feasible for installation in water depths up to about 520 m (1,710 ft). These platforms consist of slender, flexible towers and

1040-449: The Hibernia platform ). Various types of structure are used: steel jacket, concrete caisson , floating steel, and even floating concrete . Steel jackets are structural sections made of tubular steel members, and are usually piled into the seabed. To see more details regarding Design, construction and installation of such platforms refer to: and. Concrete caisson structures , pioneered by

1092-409: The "cell spar", which is built from multiple vertical cylinders. The spar has more inherent stability than a TLP since it has a large counterweight at the bottom and does not depend on the mooring to hold it upright. It also has the ability, by adjusting the mooring line tensions (using chain-jacks attached to the mooring lines), to move horizontally and to position itself over wells at some distance from

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1144-681: The 1910s. Shortly thereafter, wells were drilled in tidal zones along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. The Goose Creek field near Baytown, Texas , is one such example. In the 1920s, drilling was done from concrete platforms in Lake Maracaibo , Venezuela . The oldest offshore well recorded in Infield's offshore database is the Bibi Eibat well which came on stream in 1923 in Azerbaijan . Landfill

1196-513: The 1920s by Edward Robert Armstrong for the purpose of operating aircraft with an invention known as the "seadrome". The first purpose-built drilling semi-submersible Ocean Driller was launched in 1963. Since then, many semi-submersibles have been purpose-designed for the drilling industry mobile offshore fleet. The first offshore drillship was the CUSS 1 developed for the Mohole project to drill into

1248-505: The Earth's crust. As of June, 2010, there were over 620 mobile offshore drilling rigs (Jackups, semisubs, drillships, barges) available for service in the competitive rig fleet. One of the world's deepest hubs is currently the Perdido in the Gulf of Mexico, floating in 2,438 meters of water. It is operated by Shell plc and was built at a cost of $ 3 billion. The deepest operational platform

1300-509: The Gulf of Mexico from 2001 to 2010. On July 6, 1988, 167 people died when Occidental Petroleum 's Piper Alpha offshore production platform, on the Piper field in the UK sector of the North Sea , exploded after a gas leak. The resulting investigation conducted by Lord Cullen and publicized in the first Cullen Report was highly critical of a number of areas, including, but not limited to, management within

1352-686: The Gulf of Mexico, floating in 2,438 metres of water. It is operated by Royal Dutch Shell and was built at a cost of $ 3 billion. The first truss spars were Kerr-McGee's Boomvang and Nansen. The first (and, as of 2010, only) cell spar is Kerr-McGee's Red Hawk. These installations, sometimes called toadstools, are small platforms, consisting of little more than a well bay , helipad and emergency shelter. They are designed to be operated remotely under normal conditions, only to be visited occasionally for routine maintenance or well work . These installations, also known as satellite platforms , are small unmanned platforms consisting of little more than

1404-432: The Gulf of Mexico, the first jack-up rigs began appearing from specialized offshore drilling contractors such as forerunners of ENSCO International. The first semi-submersible resulted from an unexpected observation in 1961. Blue Water Drilling Company owned and operated the four-column submersible Blue Water Rig No.1 in the Gulf of Mexico for Shell Oil Company . As the pontoons were not sufficiently buoyant to support

1456-532: The US ( Coast Guard , Navy SEALs , Marine Recon ) often train for platform raids. On April 21, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon platform, 52 miles off-shore of Venice, Louisiana , (property of Transocean and leased to BP ) exploded , killing 11 people, and sank two days later. The resulting undersea gusher, conservatively estimated to exceed 20 million US gallons (76,000 m ) as of early June 2010, became

1508-418: The airport to offer commercial flights on aircraft up to 100 seats. On 28 April 2022, ENAC gave the authorisation to reopen the airport for general aviation while plans to offer flights on 100-seat aircraft were moved into summer 2023. In mid-June 2023 the airport opened to general aviation traffic. Current plans include establishing the airport as a base for firefighting operations in the Sardinia region with

1560-838: The airport with main Italian airports in June to mid-September, and in August–October 2011 with flights to northern Italy, Switzerland an Austria. The airport closed after the departure of an ATR42 to Rome on 10 October 2011. In 2021, the Industrial Consortium, owner of the Aliarbatax company holding 100% of the airport's shares, started plans to obtain authorisation from ENAC to reopen the airport for general aviation , with aircraft not exceeding 5,700 kg (12,600 lb) MTOW and 12 passengers, in summer 2021. Initial plans for 2022 included

1612-477: 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. Offshore drilling presents environmental challenges, both from

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1664-538: The company, the design of the structure, and the Permit to Work System. The report was commissioned in 1988, and was delivered in November 1990. The accident greatly accelerated the practice of providing living accommodations on separate platforms, away from those used for extraction. The offshore can be in itself a hazardous environment. In March 1980, the ' flotel ' (floating hotel) platform Alexander L. Kielland capsized in

1716-499: The direct predecessors of modern offshore platforms. Having been pre-constructed in a very short time, they were then floated to their location and placed on the shallow bottom of the Thames and the Mersey estuary. In 1954, the first jackup oil rig was ordered by Zapata Oil . It was designed by R. G. LeTourneau and featured three electro-mechanically operated lattice-type legs. Built on

1768-421: The impact of an iceberg . The GBS contains production storage tanks and the remainder of the void space is filled with ballast with the entire structure weighing in at 1.2 million tons . Royal Dutch Shell has developed the first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) facility, which is situated approximately 200 km off the coast of Western Australia . It is the largest floating offshore facility. It

1820-535: The industry: Drill crew will be on board if the installation is performing drilling operations. A drill crew will normally comprise: Well services crew will be on board for well work . The crew will normally comprise: The nature of their operation—extraction of volatile substances sometimes under extreme pressure in a hostile environment—means risk; accidents and tragedies occur regularly. The U.S. Minerals Management Service reported 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions on offshore rigs in

1872-418: The main platform location. The first production spar was Kerr-McGee's Neptune, anchored in 590 m (1,940 ft) in the Gulf of Mexico; however, spars (such as Brent Spar ) were previously used as FSOs. Eni 's Devil's Tower located in 1,710 m (5,610 ft) of water in the Gulf of Mexico, was the world's deepest spar until 2010. The world's deepest platform as of 2011 was the Perdido spar in

1924-544: The mobile units are anchored to the seabed. However, in deeper water (more than 1,500 metres (4,900 ft)), the semisubmersibles or drillships are maintained at the required drilling location using dynamic positioning . Around 1891, the first submerged oil wells were drilled from platforms built on piles in the fresh waters of the Grand Lake St. Marys (a.k.a. Mercer County Reservoir) in Ohio . The wide but shallow reservoir

1976-414: The name suggests, are rigs that can be jacked up above the sea using legs that can be lowered, much like jacks . These MODUs (Mobile Offshore Drilling Units) are typically used in water depths up to 120 metres (390 ft), although some designs can go to 170 m (560 ft) depth. They are designed to move from place to place, and then anchor themselves by deploying their legs to the ocean bottom using

2028-715: The nearby watchtower built by the Spaniards to protect the territory from the incursion of Arab pirates. The founders of Arbatax were Campanian fishermen from the island of Ponza , located in Lazio , close to the coast of the Italian Peninsula. The location assumed importance in the 1960s after the construction of the main Sardinian paper mill . The town is situated by the Tyrrhenian Sea , 5 km east of Tortolì . The port

2080-476: The oil/gas production process include wellhead , production manifold , production separator , glycol process to dry gas, gas compressors , water injection pumps , oil/gas export metering and main oil line pumps. Larger platforms are assisted by smaller ESVs (emergency support vessels) like the British Iolair that are summoned when something has gone wrong, e.g. when a search and rescue operation

2132-614: The produced hydrocarbons and the materials used during the drilling operation. Controversies include the ongoing US offshore drilling debate . There are many different types of facilities from which offshore drilling operations take place. These include bottom-founded drilling rigs ( jackup barges and swamp barges), combined drilling and production facilities, either bottom-founded or floating platforms, and deepwater mobile offshore drilling units (MODU), including semi-submersibles and drillships. These are capable of operating in water depths up to 3,000 metres (9,800 ft). In shallower waters,

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2184-405: The seabed like TLPs, but whereas a TLP has vertical tension tethers, a spar has more conventional mooring lines. Spars have to-date been designed in three configurations: the "conventional" one-piece cylindrical hull; the "truss spar", in which the midsection is composed of truss elements connecting the upper buoyant hull (called a hard tank) with the bottom soft tank containing permanent ballast; and

2236-471: The seabed. Steel GBS are predominantly used when there is no or limited availability of crane barges to install a conventional fixed offshore platform, for example in the Caspian Sea. There are several steel GBS's in the world today (e.g. offshore Turkmenistan Waters (Caspian Sea) and offshore New Zealand). Steel GBS do not usually provide hydrocarbon storage capability. It is mainly installed by pulling it off

2288-671: The shores of the Mississippi River by the LeTourneau Company, it was launched in December 1955, and christened "Scorpion". The Scorpion was put into operation in May 1956 off Port Aransas , Texas. It was lost in 1969. When offshore drilling moved into deeper waters of up to 30 metres (98 ft), fixed platform rigs were built, until demands for drilling equipment was needed in the 30 metres (98 ft) to 120 metres (390 ft) depth of

2340-526: The structure upright. Semi-submersible platforms can be moved from place to place and can be ballasted up or down by altering the amount of flooding in buoyancy tanks. They are generally anchored by combinations of chain, wire rope or polyester rope, or both, during drilling and/or production operations, though they can also be kept in place by the use of dynamic positioning . Semi-submersibles can be used in water depths from 60 to 6,000 metres (200 to 20,000 ft). Jack-up Mobile Drilling Units (or jack-ups), as

2392-470: The town. Today, the economy is focused on tourism and industry. Arbatax is home to a factory dedicated to the building of oil platforms , controlled by the Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem . Mussels are farmed in the nearby lagoon and fresh fish are on sale from the fishing cooperative. The red rocks are a tourist attraction. Oil platforms An oil platform (also called an oil rig , offshore platform , oil production platform , etc.)

2444-417: The weight of the rig and its consumables, it was towed between locations at a draught midway between the top of the pontoons and the underside of the deck. It was noticed that the motions at this draught were very small, and Blue Water Drilling and Shell jointly decided to try operating the rig in its floating mode. The concept of an anchored, stable floating deep-sea platform had been designed and tested back in

2496-628: The well. They can drill in water depths up to 3,700 m (12,100 ft). The main types of floating production systems are FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading system) . FPSOs consist of large monohull structures, generally (but not always) shipshaped, equipped with processing facilities. These platforms are moored to a location for extended periods, and do not actually drill for oil or gas. Some variants of these applications, called FSO (floating storage and offloading system) or FSU (floating storage unit), are used exclusively for storage purposes, and host very little process equipment. This

2548-559: The yard, by either wet-tow or/and dry-tow, and self-installing by controlled ballasting of the compartments with sea water. To position the GBS during installation, the GBS may be connected to either a transportation barge or any other barge (provided it is large enough to support the GBS) using strand jacks. The jacks shall be released gradually whilst the GBS is ballasted to ensure that the GBS does not sway too much from target location. Spars are moored to

2600-569: Was Kerr-McGee Oil Industries (now part of Occidental Petroleum ), as operator for partners Phillips Petroleum ( ConocoPhillips ) and Stanolind Oil & Gas ( BP ), that completed its historic Ship Shoal Block 32 well in October 1947, months before Superior actually drilled a discovery from their Vermilion platform farther offshore. In any case, that made Kerr-McGee's well the first oil discovery drilled out of sight of land. The British Maunsell Forts constructed during World War II are considered

2652-786: Was built from 1837 to 1845 to provide water to the Miami and Erie Canal . Around 1896, the first submerged oil wells in salt water were drilled in the portion of the Summerland field extending under the Santa Barbara Channel in California . The wells were drilled from piers extending from land out into the channel. Other notable early submerged drilling activities occurred on the Canadian side of Lake Erie since 1913 and Caddo Lake in Louisiana in

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2704-608: Was used to raise shallow portions of the Caspian Sea . In the early 1930s, the Texas Company developed the first mobile steel barges for drilling in the brackish coastal areas of the gulf. In 1937, Pure Oil Company (now Chevron Corporation ) and its partner Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil Corporation ) used a fixed platform to develop a field in 14 feet (4.3 m) of water, one mile (1.6 km) offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana . In 1938, Humble Oil built

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