Petro-Drill Offshore Oil Exploration

Portland, Maine

Petro-Drill, a multinational energy servicing company, needed to build two offshore oil-drilling vessels off the coast of Portland, Maine. Petro-Drill hired Cianbro as the construction company for this complex project. A project of this magnitude required a float-over mating technique to assemble the offshore rigs. The process for float-over mating required the construction team to submerge pontoons, while moving and aligning the 5,000-ton deck box onto columns.

Cianbro engaged Meridian to map the interior of the rig’s floating platforms using remote sensing technology, commonly referred to as LIDAR (light detection and ranging.) These digital 3D maps allowed us to facilitate structural modifications and the installation of equipment materials in each of the vessel’s four legs.  Accurate determination of the rig’s structural spans, prior to leg fabrication, minimized costly retrofitting.