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June 8, 2018

Robot vision technology increases our uptime and efficiency on Bideford Dolphin

As an effect of reduced oil price, many drilling rigs did not get their contracts renewed. Dolphin Drilling has been fortunate to be active, working for Statoil until end 2017, with their Bideford Dolphin semi-submersible drilling rig. Bideford is now Smart Stacked in Flekkefjord and is ready for new contracts.
Smart Stack – Restart and Ready for Operation

“We are constantly looking for ways to improve uptime and efficiency. New technology offers opportunities to reduce our clients’ well costs and implementing this has been a focus area over the last years”, says Håvard Smørdal, Operations at Dolphin Drilling.

One example is that new technology for offshore lifting has allowed us to increase uptime and efficiency of the rig on many occasions, where even newer rigs and cranes would not be able to operate. The technology in question is the Optilift Motion Reporter, which measures the actual movements between the crane and the supply vessel. This is an alternative to wave-radar when considering the sea state when deciding if an offshore lift can be safely performed.

“Optilift has proven throughout 2017 to be a very useful tool. On several occasions, the significant wave height reported from the control room was significantly higher than what Optilift reported as the actual movement on the specific part of the vessel deck. This has made it possible to perform a lot of lifts that would not have been possible without Optilift” says Håvard Smørdal at Dolphin Drilling.

Torbjørn Engedal, Chief Technology Officer and founder of Optilift states that the Optilift technology has been developed over several years and been offshore in the North Sea since 2014. Optilift are these days launching a new generation of the technology, aimed to provide even more features related to digitalisation and automation of offshore logistics handling and deck management.

Smørdal at Dolphin Drilling concludes that Bideford Dolphin and the team are ready for new challenges and together with competent partners, we can provide efficient and high-quality services.

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