Profile:

Deepwater Horizon Semisub Drilling Rig Specification:
Design: Reading & Bates RBS-8D
Built: Hyundai Heavy Ind. at the Ulsan, Korea shipyard
Age: 2001
Drilling Rig Type: Semisub
Additional Type Spec: 5
Water Depth Rating: 10,000 ft
Drilling Depth: 30,000 ft
Classification: ABS

ZUG, Switzerland -- The semisubmersible drilling rig Deepwater Horizon has reported a fire onboard, says Transocean Ltd. The rig is in the Gulf of Mexico Mississippi Canyon block 252, 41 mi (66 km) offshore Louisiana.

Transocean reports its Emergency and Family Response teams, the US Coast Guard, and oeprator BP Exploration & Production Inc. are responding. The reports says "a substantial majority of the 126 member crew is safe but some crew members remain unaccounted for at this time."

Designed originally for R&B Falcon, she was completed in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea, after their merger with Transocean. She is the second of two in her class, although her sister ship, the Deepwater Nautilus is not DP.

Since arriving in the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon has been under contract to BP Exploration. Her work includes wells in the Atlantis and Thunderhorse fields, a 2006 discovery in the Kaskida field, and the 2009 Tiber oilfield.

Worlds bigest rig:

Transocean Ltd. has announced that its ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig Deepwater Horizon recently drilled the deepest oil and gas well ever while working for BP and its co-owners on the Tiber well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Working with BP, the Transocean crews on the Deepwater Horizon drilled the well to 35,050 vertical depth and 35,055 feet measured depth (MD), or more than six miles, while operating in 4,130 feet of water.

These achievements are the latest in Transocean’s history of world and other records dating back to the 1950s. In 2005, the ultra-deepwater drillship Discoverer Spirit set the record for the longest Gulf of Mexico oil and gas well at 34,189 feet, MD. Most recently, the Transocean jackup GSF Rig 127 drilled the industry’s longest extended-reach well in 2008 while working for Maersk Oil Qatar AS at 40,320 feet MD with a 35,770-foot horizontal section. The well was drilled offshore Qatar in 36 days and was incident-free.

Transocean also holds the current world water-depth record of operating in 10,011 feet of water set while working for Chevron in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

The Deepwater Horizon, placed into service in 2001, is a dynamically positioned ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig capable of working in water depths of up to 10,000 feet.

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