Offshore staff
HOVIK, Norway – DNV GL has issued a new report on behalf of Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) on “Subsea – Technology Developments, Incidents and Future Trends.”
Bjørn Søgård, DNV GL’s segment director for subsea technology, said “The report aims to raise awareness and share knowledge within safety, industry cooperation, degradation mechanisms, failure modes, monitoring, integrity management, and incident-related information.”
Trond Sundby, PSA principal engineer, said “Experience from both theNorth Sea and globally shows that the use of subsea facilities, like all other offshore oil and gas activities, may have the potential to cause major accidents.
“This, along with the great number of new entrants and the increasing complexity ofsubsea installation solutions on the Norwegian continental shelf, has prompted [PSA] to commission this study.”
Around 800 subsea christmas trees are installed offshore Norway and around 5,000 globally.
Søgård said “The industry will encounter increasing complexity due its progression towards deeper, colder, more remote and environmentally sensitive areas.
“It is faced with more demanding production fluids and, in parallel, assets are becoming harder to test and it is more difficult to predict prospective failure modes. Complexity is now also increasing with the realization ofsubsea processing.”
The report outlines mechanisms related to degradation and ageing, and the effect these have on robustness in operation.
05/08/2014
