Eldon Ball, Editor-in-Chief
At the closing session of the Deep Offshore Technology Conference (DOT) in Stavanger last month, John Westwood of Douglas-Westwood, gave his forecast for deepwater spending in the future.
“The deepwater business is undergoing a period of rapid expansion, and high demand for the services of the offshore contractors is expected to continue with annual expenditures reaching over $24.6 billion by 2012,” Westwood told the audience.
Expect to see dramatic growth in deepwater (≥500 m) activity, he said, driven by growth in global energy demand, the lack of shallow-water and onshore opportunities, and new technological advances that improve the technical and economic feasibility of deepwater developments.
The very robust nature of the venue itself - a packed Deep Offshore Technology Conference & Exhibition (DOT) - underscored his point. With almost 2,000 of the world’s foremost engineers and technical experts from 45 countries present, it was clear that the industry need for technological information and experience had reached new levels.
It was yet another signal that DOT needed to expand. One conference moving annually in a relatively small part of the global deepwater arena couldn’t provide the industry with the technology exchange opportunities it demanded.
So we decided to add another DOT. Starting in 2008, there will be two venues for the premier deepwater conference. One in a US location such as Houston or New Orleans. Another in a location outside the US in a deepwater province anywhere within the entire global offshore industry.
This new schedule gives the industry more opportunity for technology exchange by providing DOT in two disparate global locations each year.
DOT leads the way
DOT is recognized as an event where operators, equipment manufacturers, contractors, and service-providers introduce deepwater solutions. Some of the advanced technologies introduced at DOT during the 1980s now are off-the-shelf, conventional equipment, or mature services.
From drilling and production equipment to subsea trees and pipelines, and from seabed separation systems to arctic E&P challenges, the list of technology advancements that have debuted at DOT conferences is long and diverse.
Along the way, some of the technology introduced has been revolutionary in its effects on deepwater operations.
Why another DOT?
Originally DOT was held every other year, alternating between a US location and a venue in Europe or South America. In 1999, the conference advanced to an annual event, supported by the rapid growth in deepwater E&P activity.
With the sudden increase in deepwater spending in the last three years - bolstered by record oil prices -- attendance figures, among other factors, have demonstrated a growing interest in the expansion of DOT. In 1999, for example, the DOT conference in Stavanger, Norway drew 865 registrants from 25 countries. This year, Stavanger DOT drew more than 1,800 attendees from 45 countries. Even more impressive, the Houston DOT conference in 2006 totaled 3,255 paid registrants.
It was no accident that DOT attendance skyrocketed as much as it did. The conference agenda has consistently represented an excellent cross-section of the challenges facing the global deepwater industry, as well as the innovative solutions to those challenges, as they push the boundaries into deeper and harsher environments.
Are there too many conferences?
We hear that question a lot. The answer is yes, but there are not too many good conferences.
When oil hits $90 a barrel, expect to see lots of outsiders jumping on the bandwagon. It happens in every industry when times are good. Last year they were doing conferences on quilting or gardening, and this year they’re doing a ‘conference’ on deepwater oil and gas. The problem facing the industry is in recognizing the real conferences - where quality content is presented by leaders in the industry - as compared to the newcomers, who are good mostly at marketing hype.
DOT started in 1981 and it is recognized as the premier deepwater conference in the world. Offshore magazine has been publishing for 53 years. PennWell, which owns both DOT and Offshore, began publishing for the oil industry over 100 years ago, with the first issue of the Oil & Gas Journal. We have been a part of this industry for a very long time.
With that as background, I’m happy to be able to tell you of the new changes happening with the Deep Offshore Technology conference. It’s a project that we hold great pride in and view as a service that will pay dividends to the industry for years to come.
Next year, DOT will be held Feb. 12-14 in Houston and Dec. 2-5 in Perth, Australia.
I look forward to seeing you at one or both of these unique events.
DOT innovations move to reality
Some of the solutions unveiled at the annual Deep Offshore Technology Conference and Exhibition (DOT) are so pertinent, so logical, and so rational, it seems an understatement to consider them “inevitable.”
In that category, the Offshore editorial staff picked some ideas from past DOTs that have a high probability for development.
Compiled only from DOT conferences during the new century, including innovations discussed in the 2004 conference in New Orleans and 2005 conference in Vitoria, Brazil, the following are examples of good bets to impact the deepwater market.
Ultra-high strength casing
At DOT 2004, Grant Prideco petroleum engineer Bruce E. Urband and BHP-Billiton engineer Dale Bradford observed that drilling extremely deep wells in water depths of 8,000 ft (2,400 m) or more puts significant strain on casing design, mainly due to the extreme burst, collapse, and tension loads required for casing at such depths.
For BHP’s Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling operations, Grant Prideco provided 13 5/8 in. (346 mm) OD by 5/8 in. (16 mm) wall (86.86 #ft-plain end), TCA 150-Q1 grade casing, which was used successfully to drill a well to TD of 30,700 ft (9,210 m) in 8,831 ft (2,650 m) of water.
BHP had planned a deep target depth of 20,750 ft (9,225 m) for its Chinook-3 prospect in the GoM, and had determined that standard API Q125 casing would not meet burst design requirements unless it had a heavier wall thickness. For this well, however, the planned 13 5/8 in. (346 mm) casing seat was so deep that casing with heavier wall thickness was not acceptable because the casing load would exceed the rig’s hook load limit. Eventually, BHP elected to specify a high yield strength casing string that could meet the burst requirements at a minimized hook load.
The well presented design challenges that have become more common as the industry has pushed the envelope for exploration drilling into deeper wells in deeper water.
At that point, BHP realized meeting the burst design criteria was impossible with conventional 13 5/8-in. (346 mm) Q125 casing. Alternative sizes of Q125 were evaluated, but design weights exceeded the rig’s hook load capacity and would not accommodate the combined weight of the casing and land string plus an over-pull margin, which was limited to 1.5 million lb, the rig’s maximum hook load. Unlike some fifth generation ultra deepwater rigs, the one contracted by BHP had a top drive rated at 750 tons (680 metric tons) that could not be retracted from the load path while running casing. As a result, the company evaluated high-strength TCA150-grade casing material.
They concluded that numerous deepwater offshore operators - including BP, Anadarko, El Paso, ChevronTexaco, and others - had used TC140-Q1 and/or TCA150-Q1 casing products.
New dry tree types
Typically, buoyancy cans constitute the tensioning system for the top tensioned risers (TTR) used with dry tree wells aboard spars. But in their DOT 2004 technical presentation, “An Alternative Dry Tree System for Spar Application,” authors Alan Yu and Ming Leung, both of Technip, and Tim Allen of BP, noted that using hydraulic tensioners directly on the spar reduced its heave response and pitch motion.
As operator for Shell, BP elected to evaluate several top tensioning systems (TTS) for its Holstein field truss spar in Green Canyon blocks 644 and 645 in 4,344 ft (1,300 m) of water in the GoM 150 mi (241 km) south of New Orleans. The TTR concept the development team chose for Holstein was an individual tensioner spar-supported vertical riser (SSVR) system.
A basic premise in the evaluation of the SSVR concept was to use as much available mature equipment as possible, including subsea tieback, stress joint, standard riser joints, keel joint, and tension joint for load transfer from the riser to the tensioning system.
For the SSVR system to function efficiently, an essential requirement was that the overall axial (i.e. heave) stiffness would be used to suppress the spar’s heave motion. Also, riser stiffness generated restoring force at the keel to reduce the spar’s pitch motion.
The Holstein dry tree outer risers and tensioning system were installed successfully and ran smoothly, the authors concluded. The true benefit of the system, they added, is the ease of access to the dry trees and the ease of tensioning system maintenance.
Floating LNG system for stranded gas
Generally, there is little or no offshore production infrastructure in remote parts of the world for handling natural gas reserves associated with deepwater oil discoveries.
In their DOT 2004 presentation, “Development of a Floating LNG Facility for Stranded Offshore Gas,” authors Charles Borland, Masoud Deidehban, and Fredrik Savio, all of ABB Lummus Global’s floating production systems unit, said while giant oil fields off West and North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia justify large LNG facilities, offshore oil fields with typical peak production of up to 300,000 b/d with associated gas production of 250 MMcf/d do not.
As a solution to such a scenario, ABB Lummus developed a floating LNG facility that can be moored in deepwater next to a remote production facility. The system, based on a proprietary process, is viable for developing stranded gas in the 0.5-3.0 tcf range with production rates from 75 to 300 MMcf/d.
The system is based on a turbo-expander process that uses no intermediate liquids for cooling, leading to low equipment inventory and no requirement for cooling fluid storage.
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