For offshore oil and gas engineers, working and living on an oil rig means spending all of your time in the same field, miles from the sea. Fortunately, oil rigs are some of the largest structures in the world.
The “height” of deep-water oil platforms that descend hundreds of feet to the seafloor dwarfs even the tallest skyscrapers, and the platforms that sit above the water, filled with technical equipment, storage facilities and accommodation for workers, have their own impressive scale. Oil rig businesses are not like other businesses, just as structures are not like other structures.
To showcase the incredible nature of the largest man-made structures, here is a list of the six largest oil rigs in the world.
The platform is exposed to sub-arctic conditions, which means it must be built to withstand the harshest environment. It can withstand seismic shocks, waves up to 16 m (52 ft) high and sea ice up to 2 m (6.5 ft) thick. It has its own autonomous power source and can continue to operate at temperatures as low as -44 degrees Celsius.
The platform is built on a gravity-based structure (GBS) fixed to the seabed at a depth of 35 meters. 52,000 m3 of concrete and 27,000 tons of steel rebar were required for the construction of GBS alone.
Only the upper side is 105 meters long, 60 meters wide and 144 meters high - about the height of a 50-story building. It weighs over 42,780 metric tons. Moving and installing to GBS in 2014 required revolutionary methods and broke many world records.
