Venezuelan Gas Rig Sinks

A natural gas exploration rig sinks—no workers injured

Aban Offshore’s Aban Pearl semi-submersible drilling rig sank off the Paria Peninsula in eastern Venezuela. Aban Offshore of India says that the rig sank “following an incident…which impacted its stability.”

The Aban Pearl was drilling the Dragon 6 non-associated gas well in 160 meters of water when it sank. The Dragon gas field is part of Pdvsa’s Mariscal Sucre offshore gas production/liquefied natural gas initiative.

Other gas fields that Pdvsa is developing by itself in the first stage of the Mariscal Sucre initiative include Patao, Mejillones and Rio Caribe with dry gas, wet gas and gas with condensates, respectively.

The Dragon field is scheduled to start commercial production of about 600 million cf/d by end-November 2012.

The Dragon field will include eight wells, a gathering platform and a 115-km, 36-inch underwater pipeline to a gas processing plant on the Paria Peninsula. Energy ministry said that the government’s intelligence service (SEBIN) will investigate what caused the semi-submersible rig to sink.

Sources say the Aban Pearl’s alarm systems were triggered at 11:20 p.m. on 12 May after a failure was detected in the rig’s flotation systems. The rig’s 92 workers were evacuated when a tilt of 10 degrees was registered. But some of the key workers stayed on the rig for several hours, until the rig’s tilt reached 15 degrees. At that time operators shut down and disconnected the gas well from the rig to prevent a potential environmental crisis in the area. The Aban Pearl reached a tilt of 45 degrees at roughly 1:30 a.m. on 13 May, at which point the remaining workers were evacuated.