Noble Bully departs for the Gulf of Mexico featuring unique drilling package

Just got an update from our Forum that the recently commissioned Noble Bully I left Keppel Shipyard in Singapore the other day bound for the Gulf of Mexico.   This rig, originally ordered by Frontier Drilling (a company acquired by Noble Drilling last summer), will be on a 5-year contract with Shell.

Of particular note, this rig was built to ice-classification standards and features a unique Huisman drilling tower.

According to Huisman‘s website:

“The selection of our in-house designed compact box type drilling tower instead of a conventional derrick allows for a significantly smaller sized vessel compared to other deepwater drill ships of similar capacity. The drilling equipment set is based on the HuisDrill 10000 design and allows offline standbuilding. A total of 950mt (over 48,000 ft) of drill pipe and casing is racked back in 2 carousel type setbacks. Drill pipe and casing are handled in 135ft lengths. The 2.400 kips drill tower is fitted with active heave compensated drawworks mounted inside the tower.

…Due to the combination of simple robust designs and the incorporation of redundancy at multiple levels, the system will maximize safety for the crew and minimize equipment downtime.”

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