Posted: June 17th, 2015

Subsea Challenges in the North Sea Projects

Rosebank reservoir is an intra and sub basalt four way inversion structure. It is made of siliciclastic fluvial and shallow marine sandstones. The field is estimated to hold about 240 million barrels of oil equivalent. Development of the field is expected to present several challenges due to harsh environmental conditions. The area is also largely undeveloped with the absence of any infrastructure.

Rosebank oil and gas field is located offshore of the Shetland Islands, in the UK. It lies in blocks 213/26 and 213/27 of production licence 1026 in 1,100m (3,700ft) of water.

In 2011, Chevron completed the field development plan for the project. The development plan aims to achieve first production at the rate of 75,000bpd and 100,000 million cubic feet of gas a day. About 15 subsea production wells and water injection wells will be drilled from four subsea manifolds.

Produced oil will be offloaded from a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) on to shuttle tankers. Gas will be processed on the FPSO and exported onshore to the Shetland Islands through a new pipeline, or through BP’s West of Shetland pipeline to the Sullom Voe terminal.

Key chapters

1) literature review
2) Harsh Environmental weather conditions
3) Metocean date analysis for water depth and harsh environmentation conditions for
deepwater current measurement programme for the field
4) Ocean field bottom exploration,Survey, imaging and characteristics
5) Design ,construction and installation of production facilities
6) FPSO specification for water depths, and design (size, depth and height of Hull)
7) Top side layout (accomodation, flare stack, separation chambers, hellideck, control and production sections)
8) Moorning line ( Moorningline selection for deep waters)
9) Risers Specification for deep water
10 Umbilicals specifications
11) Dynamic positioning system specification
12) Corrosion protection for deep water (coating specication, Cathodic protection including anode current specification/ number of required anode required.)
13) Subsea field layout( image and geography location diagram)
14) Gas export pipeline connection to onshore processing facility
15) Costing
16) Discussion
17) Conclusion

Reference
Appendix