ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Submersible drilling rig

Have you ever played with a toy boat in the bathtub and pretended to look for treasure on the bottom of the ocean? Well, a submersible drilling rig is like a giant toy boat that can go really deep underwater and drill into the ground to find things like oil or gas.

Picture a big boat with a tall tower in the middle. This tower is where people work to control the drilling process. They use big machines to lower a long metal pipe with a pointed end down to the ocean floor. The pointed end of the pipe is called a drill bit, and it spins really fast to dig into the ground.

Once the drill bit reaches the bottom, special machines called mud pumps start bringing up a mixture of water, dirt, and rocks. The people on the boat study the rocks and dirt to see if there's anything valuable there. If they find oil or gas, they drill deeper and keep bringing up more samples until they know how much they’ve found.

The submersible drilling rig is like a ship because it has to move around from place to place to look for oil or gas. But unlike regular ships, the drilling rig is really big and heavy, and it can’t move as fast. It's also super important that the people on the rig make sure they don't harm any sea creatures or the environment while they’re drilling for these resources. So, they use special tools to be extra careful.

In summary, a submersible drilling rig is like a giant toy boat that can drill into the ocean floor to find oil or gas. People control the drilling process from a tall tower on the boat and use machines to bring up samples of dirt and rock to see if they’ve found anything valuable. The rig may move slowly to different locations to search for resources, and it’s important to be careful not to harm the environment during the drilling process.