Drillship Duchess uses eight-point mooring monitoring system offshore Nigeria

Offshore staff

SEATTLE, Washington -- Measurement Technology NW (MTNW) has completed a contract to provide installation, calibration, and commissioning of an eight-point mooring monitoring system for Frontier’s drillship Duchess, off the coast of Nigeria. The new running line tensiometer and LCI-90 mooring monitoring system provides visibility into line tensions that will support mooring and rig movement monitoring.

The Duchess is a 475 x 75 ft (145 x 23 m) vessel, which needs to stay centered over an offshore oil well for months on end despite sea states and drilling activity. The MTNW Line Control Instrument (LCI) Mooring Solution allows the rig manager to keep rig positioning to within a very small tolerance for lateral movement, MTNW says.

With MTNW’s mooring line monitoring system, the user can ensure that the tension on the mooring lines is low enough that the anchors are not at risk of shifting while also being high enough to keep the vessel in place, minimizing the chances of an anchor slip. The system can also monitor the payout of the line, which enables operators to accurately place buoys to lift the mooring lines over subsea cables and pipelines.

10/08/2009