Jeremy Beckman - Editor, Europe
Technip is shifting its subsea R&D focus increasingly towards the coming generation of ultra deepwater projects. Management outlined some of the solutions and associated investments at a recent presentation at the company’s flexible risers/flowlines plant in Le Trait, northern France.
According to Technip Subsea Division President Dominique de Soras, 7,500 Technip personnel (around one third of the group’s global workforce) are employed in the subsea sector. These comprise 4,500 in Europe/Africa, 2,000 in Brazil, and 500 each in North America and the Asia/Pacific region.
Increasingly, he said, the separate divisions work together as integrated project teams. He cited as an example Tullow’s Jubilee development in 1,200-1,700 m (3,937-5,577 ft) water depth offshore Ghana. Here, Technip is responsible for engineering, fabrication, and installation of over 27 km (16.8 mi) of flexible risers and 48 km (29.8 mi) of rigid production and injection flowlines. It also will install umbilicals and other subsea structures, as well as connect flowlines to wellheads and subsea manifolds.
Work is due to take place from early to mid-2010, performed primarily by Technip’s construction vesselsDeep Blue and Deep Pioneer. The group’s operating center in Houston is managing the program, supported by the Paris division for the installations, with Flexi-France in Le Trait fabricating the flexible pipes, and the yard in Pori, Finland, responsible for other structures.
Another collaborative project is Petrobras’ Cascade/Chinook, based around the first FPSO in the US Gulf of Mexico, in a water depth of 2,500 m (8,202 ft). In this case, Technip was contracted to supply and install free-standing hybrid riser systems (FSHRs) for both Cascade and Chinook fields, all connected to the US GoM’s first FPSO. Three years earlier, Technip had engineered and installed Brazil’s first FSHR in ultra deepwater for Petrobras’ PDET project on the Roncador field offshore Brazil.
Among the benefits of this technology, the system is tensioned by a buoyancy can, allowing the riser to support its own weight. This in turn reduces the weight supported by the production platform. Also, the riser is connected to the platform via a flexible jumper, allowing the platform’s motion largely to be disassociated from that of the riser. This makes the riser virtually insensitive to fatigue caused by wave motions. If a hurricane threatens, the FPSO can be moved off-station via a simple disconnection of the flexible jumper.
Each Cascade/Chinook FSHR comprises four, 630-m (2,067-ft) long, 7-in. (17.8-cm) ID flexible jumpers; one 630-m long, 6-in. (15.2-cm) ID flexible jumper; a 39-m (128-ft) long, 6.4-m (21-ft) diameter buoyancy can, with a top depth of 200 m (656 ft) and net uplift of 70 metric tons (77 tons); and production/gas export risers. De Soras said Technip teams in Rio, Paris, and Aberdeen had been working together to optimize all their resources for a successful installation of the high-pressure dynamic flexible riser system prior to the arrival of the FPSO.
Pre-salt challenge
Alain Marion, senior VP for Subsea Assets & Technologies, spoke of the new technical challenges associated with ultra deepwater developments. With Brazil’s new pre-salt discoveries in 2,000 – 2,500 m (6,561 – 8,202 ft) water depth, he said, there were concerns over corrosion in certain cases due to high levels of CO2 in the wellstream.
“In the Gulf of Mexico, on top of that there are high-pressure/high-temperature issues to take care of. Off West Africa, there is a mixture of all these things, plus concerns over flow assurance, i.e. managing temperature during fluids transport to avoid hydrates formation.”
Marion said Technip historically has ploughed €30-35 million/year ($41-48 million/yr) into subsea R&D. Around 70% is directed towards new solutions for flexible pipes, with 12% for rigid pipes, and lesser allocations to umbilicals and hybrid technologies. One issue the group has been working on is how to qualify flexible pipes for operations in 3,000 m (9,842 ft) of water, which means subjecting the outside of the pipe to pressures of up to 300 bar (4,351 psi).
The goal is to deliver an 11-in. (28-cm) sweet service flexible for these conditions, Marion said, adding that Technip already performed qualification tests for 7-in. (17 ¾- cm) sour service pipes in 3,000 m (9,842 ft) water depth. “The deepest flexible installed to date is in 2,100 m (6,889 ft) of water,” he pointed out, “so this represents a step-change for flexible pipes/risers.”
Another major concern for the industry is riser integrity management, Marion said. “With these increasingly demanding conditions, we must be able to show our customers that our products are fulfilling [the role] they were designed for.”
Recently Technip signed a collaboration agreement with Schlumberger to jointly develop subsea integrity and surveillance solutions for flexible pipes used for deep offshore oil and gas production. This initially will focus on new applications such as Brazil’s deepwater pre-salt fields.
“Schlumberger have been active in well control and field monitoring for years,” Marion pointed out, “and some of its technologies are also applicable to flexible pipes.”
One integrity technique the partners plan to develop and qualify uses ruggedized optical fiber sensors subsea to monitor various parameters affecting the behavior of Technip’s new-design ultra deepwater flexibles and risers.
Marion touched on one application, which would involve blowing optical fibers, via stainless steel tubes, down an ultra deep riser’s entire length, taking temperature readings at various points en route. The aim would be to verify that the temperature regime within the riser avoids the risk of hydrates deposition.
Second IPB project
In late 2006, Total’s Dalia field came onstream in 1,350 m (4,429 ft) of water in Angolan block 17. One technological first of this project was Technip’s integrated production bundle (IPB), comprising eight electrically heated and gas-lift flexible risers. The heating system is designed to ensure insulation of the extensive subsea production system (71 wells, nine manifolds), preventing wax or hydrates formation during shutdowns. The gas-lift application involves injecting gas through the bottom of the riser, typically 70 ºC (158 ºF), to push the field’s heavy, viscous oil through the flowline network to the Dalia FPSO.
The next project to feature IPBs will be Pazflor, also in block 17, where first oil is due in 2011. Here Technip is engineering and providing two 10-in. ID gas-lift IPB risers, each 1,200 m (3,937 ft) long, with a weight in air of 503 metric tons (554 tons) each, and incorporating super-duplex steel tubes for added corrosion protection. As at Dalia, theDeep Blue will perform the installations. Technip also tendered the IPB solution in 1998 for Girassol, the first project onstream in block 17, although on that occasion Total opted instead for hybrid riser towers. IPBs also may be considered for the block’s next multi-field development, CLOV.
Among Technip’s other current developments, Marion mentioned a heat-traced, pipe-in-pipe system with electrical cables installed externally in a three-phase assembly. The arrangement is designed to circulate heat inside the pipe, at the same time preventing it from escaping to the outside of the pipe.
Flexible statistics
Flexi-France was established in Le Trait in 1974. To date the plant has manufactured over 7,000 km (4,350 mi) of flexible risers and flowlines, according to CEO Philippe Enxerian, in inside diameters ranging from 1.5-20-in. (3.8-50.8 cm), for applications in water depths of up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft), temperatures up to 130 ºC (266 ºF), and design pressures up to 20,000 psi (1,379 bar).
“We manage around 50 different projects each year,” he added, “and around 100 different types of pipe structures.”
Currently the plant employs a 950-strong workforce, with a normalized flexible pipe construction capacity of 480 km/yr (298 mi/yr). Enxerian said West African projects accounted for 68% of Flexi-France’s offshore-related production, followed by India, the Middle East, and the North Sea.
Facilities at the site include six manufacturing carousels offering 2,000-metric ton (2,204-ton) capacity, and storage carousels with 3,500-metric ton (3,858-ton) capacity, with hundreds of reels for delivering consignments around the globe. Recently management took delivery of a new 400-metric ton (441-ton) Amclyde crane for the plant’s 220-m (722-ft) long quayside on the river Seine, providing 400 m (1,312 ft) reach for loading and unloading services for Technip’s construction fleet.
Technip’s other flexibles plant, in Vitoria, Brazil, employs around 1,200 personnel, with a capacity of 380 km/yr (236 mi/yr). AsiaFlex in southern Malaysia, the company’s newest manufacturing facility, is due to start operating at the end of the year, providing 150 km/yr (93 mi/yr) capacity, manned by 300 personnel.
Technip also operates steel tube umbilical manufacturing centers in Houston and Newcastle, UK, (under the DUCO umbrella), and AngoFlex in Lobito, Angola. To support rigid pipelay operations, the group maintains a spoolbase network of locations in Orkanger, Norway; Evanton, Scotland; Mobile, Alabama; Barra do Riacho, Brazil; and Dande, Angola.
Currently the group operates a fleet of 16 construction/support vessels, with three more due to be added by 2011. “Over the past four years we have spent €1.3-1.4 billion ($1.78-1.92 billion) to enhance and complement our fleet of vessels and manufacturing facilities,” said Marion.
Later this year the newbuild rigid pipelay vessel Apache II – acquired last summer from previous owner Oceanteam – has been delivered from the Metalships yard in Vigo, northern Spain. This is intended to replace the original Apache, built in 1979, which completed its final pipelay assignment last year before being taken out of service.
Deep Energy, due to be delivered in 2011 from a shipyard in China, will have a similar pipe-carrying capacity to the Deep Blue, Marion explained, with a 22 knot-transit speed. Its pipelay spread is under construction in Newcastle, UK.
Another new pipelay shipSkandi Vitoria will be the first Brazilian-flagged flexible pipelay vessel, he added.
