''Thunder Horse PDQ'' is a BP plc and

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

joint venture

semi-submersible Semi-submersible may refer to a self-propelled vessel, such as: *Heavy-lift ship, which partially submerge to allow their cargo (another ship) to float into place for transport *Narco-submarine, some of which remained partially on the surface *Se ...

oil platform An oil platform (or oil rig, offshore platform, oil production platform, and similar terms) is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platfor ...

on location over the

Mississippi Canyon The Mississippi Canyon is an undersea canyon, part of the Mississippi Submarine Valley in the North-central Gulf of Mexico, south of Louisiana. According to the U.S. Geological Survey GLORIA Mapping Program, it is the dominant feature of the nor ...

Thunder Horse oil field Thunder Horse oil field is a large offshore deepwater oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, around southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana. Large new oil discoveries within it were announced in early 2019. Description The field is being developed by ...

(Block 778/822), in deepwater

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

, southeast of

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

, moored in waters of . The "PDQ" identifies the platform as being a Production and oil Drilling facility with crew Quarters. ''Thunder Horse PDQ'' is the largest offshore installation of its kind in the world. The vessel's hull is of GVA design. The hull was built by

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd ( ko, 대우조선해양; abbreviated DSME) is one of the "Big Three" shipbuilders of South Korea, along with Hyundai and Samsung. History On 21 February 2011, the A. P. Moller-Maersk Group (Ma ...

(DSME) in Okpo,

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, then loaded aboard the

heavy lift ship A heavy-lift ship is a vessel designed to move very large loads that cannot be handled by normal ships. They are of two types: *''Semi-submersible'' ships that take on water ballast to allow the load—usually another vessel—to be floated o ...

and transported to Kiewit Offshore Services in

Ingleside, Texas Ingleside is a city in Nueces and San Patricio Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. Its population was 9,519 at the 2020 census. Ingleside was the home to Naval Station Ingleside. On August 24, 2005, the BRAC Committee voted to close the base. ...

, where it was integrated with its topsides modules that were built in Morgan City, La. The journey around the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...

took nine weeks (63 days), from 23 July to 23 September 2004.

Hurricane Dennis

''Thunder Horse PDQ'' was evacuated with the approach of

Hurricane Dennis Hurricane Dennis was an early-forming major hurricane in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico during the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. Dennis was the fourth named storm, second hurricane, and first major hurricane of the season. F ...

in July 2005. After the hurricane passed, the platform fell into a 30 degree

list A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby union ...

and was in danger of foundering. The platform was designed for a 100-year event, and inspection teams found no hull damage and no leaks through its hull. Rather, an incorrectly plumbed 6-inch length of pipe allowed water to flow freely among several

ballast tank A ballast tank is a compartment within a boat, ship or other floating structure that holds water, which is used as ballast to provide hydrostatic stability for a vessel, to reduce or control buoyancy, as in a submarine, to correct trim or list, ...

s that set forth a chain of events causing the platform to tip into the water. The platform was fully righted about a week after ''Dennis'', delaying commercial production initially scheduled for late 2005. During repairs, it was discovered that the underwater

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a n ...

was severely cracked due to poorly welded pipes. The platform took a nearly-direct hit six weeks later from

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

, but was undamaged.

References

External links

*
Thunder Horse Project images, maps and diagrams
at ''SubSeaIQ'' *

BP's deepwater drilling platform {{DEFAULTSORT:Thunder Horse Pdq 2005 ships Drilling rigs Maritime incidents in 2005 Oil platforms off the United States Semi-submersibles Ships built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Ships of BP Ships of ExxonMobil

Hurricane Dennis

See also

References

External links