Vietnam shipyard firm launches $230mn home-made oil rig The Tam Dao 05 jack-up rig is seen in Vung Tau City, located in southern Vietnam, on December 13, 2015. Tuoi Tre A Vietnamese shipyard firm held a launch ceremony on Sunday for its newly built jack-up rig, a multimillion-dollar platform enabling the country to become one of ten country able to master advanced oil rig building technology. The Tam Dao 05 jack-up rig was launched in Vung Tau, the coastal city of the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, where its main contractor, PV Shipyard, a subsidiary of state-run oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, is headquartered. A jack-up rig, also known as a self-elevating unit, is a type of mobile platform that consists of a buoyant hull fitted with a number of movable legs, capable of raising its hull over the surface of the sea. These types of platform are mostly used as exploratory drilling rigs offshore, or for wind farm services. The US$230 million Tam Dao 05 rig was built under a project developed by the Joint Venture Vietsovpetro, a joint Russian-Vietnamese oil and gas exploration enterprise also based in Vung Tau. The platform, designed on Friede and Goldman JU-2000E models, weighs 18,000 metric tons, and is capable of operating at a water depth of more than 120 meters and drilling up to a 9,000 meter depth from the sea bottom, according to PV Shipyard. Tam Dao 05 obtained safety certification from the American Bureau of Shipping and is able to operate safely in violent storms. Photo: PV Shipyard The jack-up rig is designed, built and managed mostly by PV Shipyard engineers and workers, and is the second of its kind to be completely made by the Vietnamese company, following the launch of the Tam Dao 03 in 2012. “The successful construction of the Tam Dao 05 jack-up rig has enabled Vietnam to become one of ten countries able to master the design and building of oil drilling platforms,” Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan said at the launch ceremony. Besides PV Shipyard, another PetroVietnam subsidiary, the PTSC Mechanical and Construction (PTSC M&C), is the second Vietnamese firm that has gone from using foreign experts to now being able to export giant platforms made entirely on its own. These two PetroVietnam units are clear examples of Vietnamese engineers developing their skills and adapting to oil rig building technology. TUOI TRE NEWS