North Atlantic Drilling orders BOP control systems from GE

Feb. 3, 2014
North Atlantic Drilling has agreed to purchase two next-generation GE Oil & Gas SeaONYX BOP control systems to upgrade control spreads on board its semisubmersible West Venture and drillship West Navigator.

Offshore staff

FLORENCE, Italy – North Atlantic Drilling has agreed to purchase two next-generation GE Oil & Gas SeaONYX BOP control systems to upgrade control spreads on board its semisubmersible West Venture and drillship West Navigator.

The SeaONYX BOP control system extends system availability by incorporating multiple redundancies and hot-swappable components to keep operations online. SeaONYX is built upon GE’s proven Mark VIe architecture, at work in more than 2,000 wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power installations worldwide.

In addition to improved uptime performance compared to other controllers, SeaONYX is a keystone of GE’s predictive drilling management technology, which helps drillers to address issues before they occur.

“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,” said Chuck Chauviere, president of Drilling Systems – GE Oil & Gas. “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.”

02/03/2014