Selection of Jack-up Rigs for Subarctic Offshore Drilling on Sakhalin Island

On the shelf of Russian Sakhalin island, there are many challenges in offshore drilling, such as low temperature, harsh sea condition, strict environmental protection policy and transportation problems. In the jack-up rig market, not all jack-up rigs has the capability to drill successfully in this area. The key to the success of drilling operation is to select a proper rig suitable for drilling operation in this area. Through analysis about local environments, engineering conditions, environment protection requirements and transportation problems, the key parameters and process of the optimization jack-up rigs have been obtained. In practice, this selection method had helped successfully the company to choose several high qualified rigs and drill many wells. The result shows that this selection method is suitable to Sakhalin subarctic offshore area condition and can guarantee effectively the quality of the selected platform to complete the drilling operation.