Secondary cementing
18 July 2017
Settling Pit
18 July 2017

Semisubmersible drilling rig

A floating offshore drilling unit that has pontoons and columns that, when flooded, cause the unit to submerge to a predetermined depth. Living quarters, storage space, and so forth are assembled on the deck. Semisubmersible rigs are self-propelled or towed to a drilling site and either anchored or dynamically positioned over the site, or both. In shallow water, some semisubmersibles can be ballasted to rest on the seabed. Semisubmersibles are more stable than drillships and are used extensively to drill wildcat wells in rough waters such as the North Sea. Two types of semisubmersible rigs are the bottle-type and the column-stabilized. See Floating Offshore Drilling Rig.