Fiber optics finds application in offshore communications

The soaring price of oil and gas and the move to more E&P in deepwater regions are driving the demand for offshore projects that require specialized submarine cable.

Cable makers such as Pirelli and Nexans are turning out new cable designs, including umbilicals for the oil and gas industry and hybrid power cables with optical fibers for offshore wind farms. Offshore oil and gas is the larger of these two markets.

In Brazil, which has some of the world’s most productive offshore oil and gas fields, Pirelli will open a new facility next year to manufacture umbilicals.

Nexans is also targeting projects in Brazil with newly designed umbilicals for offshore operations that require free-hanging umbilicals in 8,200 ft (2,500 m) of water to connect platforms to templates on the sea floor.

In Norway, Nexans has supplied the world’s longest umbilical for Statoil’s Snøhvit offshore gas field, which the company recently installed. The entire subsea operation, located about 90 mi (144 km) offshore, is controlled from an onshore facility.

Operating offshore sites from onshore is a nascent trend, which aims to reduce capex and opex. There are two other similar projects: Norsk Hydro’s Ormen Lange project off Norway and the Burullus partnership’s West Delta project in the Mediterranean off Egypt.

Companies also are investing in new technologies such as powerful electric subsea pumps that will help them squeeze the last drops out of old wells.

“By 2015, a quarter of all offshore oil will come from deepwater wells -- more than 1,640 ft (500 m) deep -- compared to 10% in 2004,” says Steve Robertson, manager oil and gas research at Douglas-Westwood, a UK-based consultancy.

For BP, which today operates more than 150 subsea wells, the percentage will be higher than the industry average, says Robertson.

“Over the next four years, the proportion of oil and gas BP produces from subsea fields around the world will more than double,” says David Brookes, program leader, Deepwater Facilities, for BP. “By 2012, we estimate that over half of our field development projects that are likely to be underway will be in deepwater. Many of these could be in water depths of 8,200 ft to 9,849 ft (3,000 m), or even more. During this time, the investment levels in subsea and deepwater facilities are likely to run in the range of $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion a year.”

And, according to industry sources, because the infrastructure for all such future projects will be placed on the sea floor, the demand for longer, stronger, and more pressure-resistant cable and control umbilicals is certain to increase dramatically.•