Drilling barge

Bottom-supported vessels consist of drilling platforms, jackup rigs, and drilling barges. A drilling platform is not employed until reserves warranting field development is indicated. Platforms are currently being set in water depths up to 1,000 ft, and also serve as permanent production facilities. 

Drilling barges, commonly employed in inland waters and marshes, can be used where water depths do not exceed about 25 ft. These self-contained vessels provide the least expensive drilling vessel, but have limited applicability because of water depth limitations. 

Drilling barge struck shallow gas followed by explosion and fireball... 

Offshore Peru, Drilling Barge, Explosion/Fire Blowout incident. 

Mississippi River, USA, Drilling Barge, Ruptured Pipeline Drill barge spudded into gas pipeline 1 Fatality... 

Department of Energy, Report on the Loss of the Drilling Barge Transocean III, H.M.S.O., London 1975. 

CP Baker (drilling barge) Gulf of Mexico (US), 1964 21 fatalities Blowout, fire and explosion. 

Swamp Barges operate in very shallow water (less than 20 ft). They can be towed onto location and are then ballasted so that they sit on bottom . The drilling unit is mounted onto the barge. This type of unit is popular in the swamp areas of Nigeria. 

The template will be constructed and fitted out at a fabrication yard and then transported offshore to the drilling location. The template is lowered to the seabed using a crane barge or, if small enough, lowered beneath a semi-submersible rig. Prior to drilling the first well, piles are driven into the sea bed to hold the template in place. 

The jack-up or self-elevated rig. introduced in the 1950s. is a barge with movable legs, which can be lowered to the sea floor and the barge jacked into drilling position above the water. Jack-ups are used in water depths up to about 300 feet (91 meters). See Fig. 17(b) on p. 2695. 

Low, E. (1907). Wash-drill borings on the New York State Barge Canal. Engineering News 57(Jan.l7) 54-57. 

Mobile onshore and offshore oil well drilling platforms, barges, trucks, or other mobile facilities when in a fixed position ... 

A self-contained drilling rig either packaged in modules or handled as individual components, which can be set and removed via derrick barge or platform crane(s)... 

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