Geoquip Marine, a geotechnical engineering and offshore drilling company, will unveil its new GMTR150 rig at Oceanology International in London. The GMTR150 is a twin ram drilling rig that can be used for drilling, coring, sampling and testing in water depths up to 3500m, including the borehole depth.
Geoquip has designed and engineered the rig as the latest addition to a series of modular ram hoist type rigs which can be mobilized from vessels of opportunity. GMTR150 enables the company to survey at greater depth than the rigs in the existing fleet and therefore expand into deeper water markets.
“The GMTR150 builds on the success of our GMTR120 rig and is suitable for drilling, coring, sampling and in-situ testing, including PCPT,” said Andrew Wright, CEO of Geoquip Marine. “The rig has an automated pipe handling system, a ram hoist system with twin wire suspension for safe and controlled handling of in-hole tools and a 6m passive stroke compensation. It is also designed to be capable of lowering and hoisting our GMCPT201 deep water seabed CPT unit.”
GMTR150 has been mobilized on board Poseidon-1, a new build DP2 vessel which has been designed and built in Japan, providing a stable platform for deep water drilling operations. It is particularly suitable for pressure and non-pressure coring of gas hydrates in deeper waters and has already seen its first use, performing deep water gas hydrate exploration in Japanese waters, including CPT, sampling and pressure coring in water depths in excess of 1000m.
The Poseidon-1 and GMTR150 are now available for gas hydrate campaigns and geotechnical site investigation surveys in the Far East and globally.
Image: GMTR150/Geoquip Marine
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