Although the Pace-R801 doesn’t have any workers on the rig floor, Purvis said the autonomous rig still requires humans to operate, including a drilling manager, control engineers and maintenance ...

Long before offshore oil rigs are put together, much less sent out into the open ocean, they're expertly designed. Schematics are drawn up, and in many cases, engineers will take these plans and ...

Rig-floor drilling robots improve quality control in repetitive tasks and eliminate people from red-zone exposure to dangers such as dropped objects and pinch points. Alex Procyk.

The premise of a jackup rig is that it is self-elevating; here, the legs are stationed on ocean floor and the drilling equipment is jacked up above the water's surface.

The Nabors PACE®-R801 automated drilling rig on-site in the Permian Basin. Nabors Drilling. As the U.S. rig count continues a slow rise in a somewhat muted response to higher prices for crude oil ...

Today, Patterson has about 100 super-spec rigs, machines with masts and substructures that have a load capacity of 750,000 pounds, a proxy for the amount of drill pipe a rig can manage.

As of Saturday, the DDII has drilled 5,000 feet below the sea floor. The other drill rig, the DD III, started a few weeks earlier and has already tunneled down about 10,900 feet below the sea floor.

Long before offshore oil rigs are put together, much less sent out into the open ocean, they're expertly designed. Schematics are drawn up, and in many cases, engineers will take these plans and ...