DETAILS
Client name: Arverne Drilling Services
Project name: Audit & Inspection of a land drilling rig for a geothermal campaign nearby Paris
Date / duration: 2024 / 10 days
Country: France
General project information
Antoine Louvat acted as project manager. The project took 5 days to be completed with two inspectors, during the month of October 2024. The inspectors (two) checked the equipment and systems of a land drilling rig chosen to drill, in the premises of the Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, wells aimed at exploiting geothermal resources.
Description of project
Our client, who was contracted to drill geothermal wells in the premises of the Charles de Gaulle airport, near Paris, needed to show to its client that the rig that its client had chosen was confirmed as being fit for the job by a third-party company. The third-party company chosen to perform the audit on rig fitness was Dolfines.
Equipment required todrill wells by companies looking for the exploitation of gethermal resources is not different from equipment required to drill wells that explore and/or exploit other underground resources be them liquid or gas resources.
Therefore, naturally, Dolfines, a company specialized in the inspection and audit of assets that drill for other natural resources, that are referred to as “drilling rigs”, was selected to perform this inspection.
Activity and solutions developed
We mobilized two inspectors, one with an electrical background and another one with a drilling and HSE background. Our inspectors performed a documentation review to make sure that that the rig had valid certificates, performed a visual inspection to assess the integrity of the rig equipment and rig structures and performed function tests, whenever the operational status of the rig allowed them.
Our inspectors spent 5 days on the rig, checking equipment condition against standards and recommended practices such as those issued by teh American Petroleum Institute (API).
Project Results
Dolfines was chosen to inspect the land drilling rig that drilled in the perimeter of the CdG airport, since it is recognized as an expert in the realm of the drilling rigs audits and inspections. Furthermore, Dolfines and Arverne Drilling Services had a business relationship, since Dolfines had inspected other rigs of the company. Besides the need to have a third-party providing a technical opinion about the condition of the drilling rig and its fitness to drill for contractual purposes, rig audits and inspections are important to clients because it allows them to anticipate problems and solve situations before they become critical.
It allows also clients not to commence operations with equipment and/or structures that are in critical conditions, including safety equipment, thus avoiding unsafe situations and/or non-productive time. Besides the priceless aspect of avoiding incidents and accidents involving people, losses related to non-productive time (“NPT”) of a drilling rig are substantially higher than the cost of a rig inspection. Operating costs of rigs, vulgarly known as Opex, in addition to spread costs, that is, the costs the other services associated to drilling a well and loss of production resulting from NPT make it highly recommended to perform rig audits and inspections prior to commencing operations or at any other point in time a client wants to make sure that a rig is fit to work.
Group added value
Dolfines is a French company and dealt with a French client. This improved communication. The inspection was performed in the time frame agreed without any delays. Findings of the inspection were communicated to our client in the form of reports. The fact that the audit was performed within the premises of the CgD airport required some security clearances that, in general, are not required in what we do and where we do it. We contributed to a safe and performant operation of a rig that drilled to exploit a “clean” energy. We are proud for having contributed to the success of such a project.
