Cleaning and Full Inspection of Legs of Jack-Up Rig in Gabon

When a jack-up rig located in Gabon was scheduled to move to another location, a Hydrex team mobilized from the company’s office in Port Gentil to perform a full inspection and cleaning of the drilling platform’s legs.

A cleaning facilitates any needed full scale inspection of an offshore unit which was an important factor for the owner of this rig as he also wanted to have a Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI) an Eddy-current testing of the legs carried out. Because the legs of this type of offshore unit are secured into the sea bottom while the rig is stationed, this kind of testing can only be performed when its legs are raised during a mobilization.

There was only a timeframe of 3 days available for the team to perform the necessary operation before the rig arrived at its new location and the legs would be jacked down onto the sea bottom and secured again. For this reason a Hydrex supervisor went onboard the rig prior to the operation to discuss the scope of work and finalize the HAZOP. This was done to make sure that both the cleaning and inspection were perfectly geared to the mobilization schedule of the platform and that the safety of the team would be guaranteed at all times.

The team was brought on board of the rig in advance together with the needed equipment. This enabled them to initiate the operation as soon as the retraction of the first leg started. Both the cleaning work and the consequent inspections were finished by the time the rig reached its destination and no time was lost for the customer.