Kværner wins Unocal contract
Unocal Thailand has awarded Aker Kværner a contract for the supply of surface wellhead equipment and associated services to be used within its Gulf of Thailand operations. The assignment will run over two years, with an option for two more years. Should the two-year option be exercised, the value of the contract will be approximately $35 million.
Aker Kværner’s subsea and wellhead business unit Kværner Oilfield Products (KOP) will deliver the equipment from its manufacturing plant on Batam Island in Indonesia. The project will entail supplying 850-1,000 sets of surface wellheads and trees over the contract period. KOP will provide associated installation and maintenance services from its service support centers in Songkhla and Bangkok in Thailand.
Unocal Thailand and KOP have conducted surface wellhead business in the Gulf of Thailand and surrounding region since the early 1980s.
Subsea 7 wins contracts
Talisman Production Norge AS has awarded the Subsea 7 joint venture a contract for the replacement of a 10-in. production riser on the Varg field on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The contract is valued at $2.5 million.
The production riser will be deployed from the PGS-owned FPSOPetrojarl Varg and tied in to a 10-in. subsea flowline to the unmanned monotower wellhead platform Varg A. The WHP and FPSO are 1,200 m apart and are connected by flexible flowlines and risers for oil production and water and gas injection. An umbilical provides power supply and control.
The offshore phase of the work began at the end of January and will be performed under an existing Statoil Hyperbaric Welding and Diving Services contingency contract.
Meanwhile, Woodside has awarded the Integrated Remote Technologies (IRT) division Subsea 7 a contract for the provision of ROV services and personnel. The contract will comprise all Woodside projects for the next 12 months and is valued at $750,000.
The work was awarded as a result of a successful choke change-out in the Echo Yodel field, Australia, for Woodside, earlier this month. At the start of the year, it was determined that the choke, which was installed on the Yodel 4 wellhead four years ago, had failed and needed to be replaced due to a number of unexplained anomalies. The project used Woodside’s heave-compensated crane for choke running and retrieval.
Operations for the choke change-out project included the mobilization of all equipment and personnel, management of operations onboard the Farstad owned DP vesselLady Christine, ROV operations using the Cobra 07 work class system with tether management system (TMS), and ultimately demobilization.
DES launches reinjection system
Aberdeen-based DES Operations is launching new technology to the global subsea market that it says will enable increased production on oil and gas producing assets.
Two years in the development with ÂŁ2.5 million funding from 3i and the DTI, the patented Multiple Application Reinjection System (MARS) enables oil and gas operators to optimize production while minimizing the current risks and costs associated with well intervention, DES says.
DES Operations performed system integration tests at a subsea center in Aberdeenshire in March for oil and gas operators to show how it is deployed and operates on a standard subsea tee.
By using MARS, full well-bore intervention or flowline decommissioning and re-commissioning are avoided, the company says, lowering the economic barriers to achieving increased production.
“In the pumping scenario, MARS can be deployed on the subsea well system at any time during field life and will allow operators to increase production without well intervention or drilling risk,” says Ian Donald, DES managing director.
“With oil and gas operators increasingly seeking low capital expenditure solutions to the development of new and existing fields, the market potential for MARS is significant, particularly in deepwater regions.”
FMC contract
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has awarded a contract to FMC Technologies Inc., to supply subsea production equipment for certain Anadarko wells in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that will be connected to the Independence Hub. The $25-million contract includes 10 subsea trees and associated equipment.
Independence Hub, an affiliate of Enterprise Products Partners L.P. and the Atwater Valley Producers Group, includes Anadarko Petroleum, Dominion Exploration & Production Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., Spinnaker Exploration Co., and Devon Energy Corp.
Independence Hub will be a deep-draft, semisubmersible platform that will be connected initially to eight natural gas fields. Anadarko is the operator of six of the eight fields and will be the operator of the Independence Hub facility. The fields are located in the Atwater Valley, DeSoto Canyon, and Lloyd Ridge areas of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where water depths range from 7,800 to 9,000 ft. Deliveries will be completed over a multi-year period and are scheduled to commence in 2005.
C&C Technologies orders new AUV
C&C Technologies Inc. of Lafayette, Louisiana, has ordered critical components from Kongsberg Maritime to construct its second Surveyor Class autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The C-Surveyor II will be available for hydrographic surveys starting this month.
The design of the C-Surveyor II AUV will be modeled after C&C’s existing C-Surveyor I. Sensors will include a multi-beam echosounder, chirp side scan sonar, chirp sub-bottom profiler, and a CTD system. The AUV will be positioned using ultra short baseline acoustics integrated with inertial measuring unit and a Doppler velocity log. A fuel cell will provide 45 kWh of energy resulting in an endurance of 50 hours at 3.8 knots with all sensors operating. An acoustic data link will allow sub-sampled sonar data to be viewed in real time. The C-Surveyor II AUV will be initially rated for 3,000 m, but will be upgraded to 4,500 m in 3Q 2005.
“Our clients have requested our AUV expertise in several regions of the world,” says Thomas Chance, president of C&C Technologies.
C&C’s uptime during AUV surveys has gone from 16% in 2000 to over 95% today, the company says.
