Versabar VB10000
$100-million oil rig lifter
Salvaging a downed oil platform takes months, as a team of divers cuts apart the rig and a derrick hauls each piece to the surface. The VB10000 can remove an entire rig in a few hours, for a quarter of the price. Last fall, Versabar’s $100-million monster completed its first lift off the coast of Louisiana.
Divers connected hooks to the platform trusses, cut the platform legs away, and four hoists picked the whole thing up. About as wide as a football field and as tall as a 25-story building, the VB10000 is desperately needed—U.S. regulators have identified 1,800 rigs that must be removed within 10 years.
Read more about the Versabar and the company's founder, Jon Khachaturian, in our profile.
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Didn't the CIA make a covert version of this a long time ago to recover a Russian sub with nukes on it?
Hey oil company we need to fix you leak fast!!!!
A sure, give me a few months.
Hey oil company we need you to remove your broken rig.
You mean the evidence of how we screwed up, yea sure
we will have it gone reall quick! Pronto!
Hey oil company we need to fix you leak fast!!!!
A sure, give me a few months.
Hey oil company we need you to remove your broken rig.
You mean the evidence of how we screwed up, yea sure
we will have it gone real quick! Pronto!
@wmmurphy - yes it was with a program through HH and it was called Project Jenny. Nice call.
This machine is incredible.
The sad part is that there is a market need for such a device. Why are there so many downed platforms? Poor engineering? Sloppy management? Poor safety practices or procedures?
@david
I would imagine some fall under that but I'm willing to bet most were just abandoned after the well dried up or money for operations ran out. I find it hard to believe they just collapse on a monthly basis. lol
The Global Marine/Lockheed/Hughes project to recover the Russian Sub was the Azorian project, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian.
It was incorrectly called the Jennifer project by journalists.
The lift capacity was 10000 tons and the depth was 5000 m. The lifting was done by a single pipe on a gimballed and heave compensated derrick. In today's dollars, it was about a $1.6 billion project. Not the same scale as the Versabar.