DESIGN OF TLP DRILLING PACKAGE REQUIRES DETAILED PLANNING

Environmental loads and large, heavy drilling risers impose design restrictions on drilling systems installed on deepwater tension leg platforms (TLPs). The use of a full drilling package for deepwater TLPs requires detailed planning, especially in the early conceptual phase. This paper reports that in some cases, the cost involved in full drilling operations from a deepwater TLP may be prohibitively high. For these situations, one way to make the prospect economically attractive is to predrill the wells from a floating vessel and use the TLP only as a wellhead platform. However, the use of a TLP only as a wellhead platform, with no drilling package onboard, introduces a number of disadvantages.