Risk analysis of jackup rigs

Increasing attention has been focussed in the North Sea and elsewhere on the quantification of the risks of working in a hazardous enviroment: the offshore world. The perception of risk with respect to mobile rigs has often been vague and uninformed. This paper attempts to put the risks with respect to jackup rigs into perspective by quantifying them and comparing them to other risks.

This paper contains a few risk comparisons with fixed platforms, semi-submersibles, and drillships. Historical casualties are used in an example to show how a change intended to make an operation safer, may result in the opposite effect.

Examining risks from losses due to environmental overload, the conclusion is reached that jackups are very safe structures: there appears to be no jackup, in the timeframe examined, that has been lost because of a deficiency in the calculation methods currently in use by knowledgeable experts.