Subsea 7’s life of field business unit i-Tech 7 reports it has completed an underwater inspection in lieu of dry-docking (UWILD) project for Borr Drilling in the North Sea.
Borr Drilling required a hull inspection for its Paragon MSS-1 mid-water semi-submersible, to meet ABS intermediate survey certification requirements. In place of conventional methods using divers, i-Tech 7 presented a solution using a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to reduce cost, risk, and allow drilling operations to continue without interruption.
i-Tech 7 mobilized an observation class ROV and supporting UWILD equipment to be installed on the Paragon MSS-1, along with two ROV personnel and one inspector to complete the operations.
i-Tech 7 said its portfolio of vessel-based UWILD solutions can carry out inspections on mobile drilling units (MODUs) and floating production, storage and offloading units (FPSO), using ROV machine-vision technology combined with fast acquisition, processing and reporting of data.
Robin Mawhinney, i-Tech 7’s regional director for Europe, Africa and Canada, said, “This is another great project example that showcases the strength and depth of our UWILD service offering.
“Our success lies in our repair expertise combined with our advanced automated analysis and data reporting capability. It is further strengthened with our extensive ROV fleet, large pool of inspection personnel and dedicated in-house support.”
Bjoern Ritter, rig manager at Borr Drilling, said, “i-Tech 7 presented a service at an attractive cost, with less risk and minimal disruption to operations.”
Ritter said the i-Tech 7 team completed the hull survey in less than two weeks, despite some very testing weather conditions.