Jaime Kammerzell
Gulf of Mexico Editor
Offshore

Ventures into deepwater call for a step change in technology to bring reserves that lie farther and farther from existing infrastructure into production, Uri Nooteboon, INTEC Engineering's vice president Offshore Field Development, said at the Offshore Technology Conference on May 2.

"As an industry, we need to go beyond existing, conventional technology to bring remote, ultra-deepwater offset wells into production. To do this, we need to innovate, using optimum, full-system engineering techniques that manage risk and improve profitability," Nooteboom said.

With a projected $15.3 billion global market for subsea hardware over the next five years – as forecast by Quest Offshore in February, industry leadership for step-change technology is necessary to bring stranded hydrocarbons into production, Nooteboom said.

"We need collaborative efforts to bring more reserves into economic reality while enhancing the value of existing deepwater floating facilities," Nooteboom said.

Panalists included David Hartell, project manager-deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Marathon Oil Co.; Mike McEvilly, manager of facilities and construction – Worldwide Deepwater Facilities, Anadarko Petroleum Corp.; and Ron Bass, senior staff engineer, Shell Oil Co. Tom Choate, INTEC manager of systems engineering, moderated the panel.

INTEC and its industry panelists agree that long-distance delivery management (LDDM) will help facilitate frontier technology development while making long-distance delivery systems possible, Hartell said.

"Today's exploration and development limits can effectively address technology demands in the GoM. Significant frontiers ahead, however, include the Arctic Sea and West Africa where there's minimal infrastructure, Hartell said.

Nooteboom advises that LDDM technology development will bring within industry grasp the installation of production facilities in 15,000 ft of water – the deepest threshold in the GoM – and the installation of production flowline systems more than 300 mi from wellhead to shore, as recently achieved in the Mediterranean Sea.

Choate said the industry is challenged to develop systems that can reliably deliver produced fluids over ever-longer offset distances to remote processing facilities and even onshore in some cases.

Some of the attributes or goals of LDDM include optimizing capital expenditures, optimizing delivery associated waste fluids, such as produced water, and reducing costs associated with locating facilities offshore.

All facets of equipment design and development techniques are impacted to creat an optimum system design that incorporates the mechanical, flow assurance, installation, and operational issues of development, McEvilly said.

"Anadarko is tackling these issues with its Independence Hub and Independence Trail project in deepwater GoM using a hub-and-spoke field development concept," McEvilly said.

Flow assurance – already critical to the success of deepwater development – is even more vital for deep-offset developments and LDDM systems such as Independence Hub, McEvilly said.

Another big flow assurance issue for LDDM is the management of extremely high well pressures – 15,000 to 20,000 psi, Hartell said. Remote developments will face greater challenges in managing high reservoir well pressures because of the impact of steel weight resulting from the thicker pipelines and risers needed.

An additional flow assurance issue is the prevention of slugging. Duel flowlines can be employed to manage slugging, liquid accumulation, and pipeline pressure drop or the loss of energy in moving production through the pipe, Hartell said.

In terms of innovations in hydrate prevention, Bass explains that Shell Oil Co. has fully tested, patented electric flowline heating system that is efficient and applicable for both oil and gas. The system is used for preheating prior to cold production start-up and during production shut-in – as the system does not currently run continuously – to prevent hydrates from forming or to remediate hydrates after an extended cold shut down.

05/02/05