Installation Methodology Ophir WHP

The platform for the Ophir development off Malaysia is set to commence its journey to the field from the Muhibbah Engineering yard at Port Klang.

Project co-owner Octanex revealed Monday the jacket and topsides had been loaded out onto transport barges and would be transported to the field shortly.

Upon arrival, the 350-tonne platform will be installed by Dutch company SPT Offshore which has been subcontracted by Muhibbah for the transport and installation of the platform.

The Ophir field is being developed via three production wells, a well head platform and a floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

It was reported last month Malaysian contractor MTC Engineerig had bought an oil tanker - Puteri Bangsa - for conversion into the MTC Ledang FPSO which will be used at the field.

Output at the $90 million Ophir development is expected in the second half of the year.

The Ophir oilfield is being developed under a risk service contract. The co-owners are Octanex (50%), along with Malaysian companies Scomi Energy (30%) and Vestigo Petroleum (20%).

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/1232090/ophir-platform-loaded-out

Oil and Gas Production: Onshore

Onshore production is most economical oil producing compare to offshore.

The picture shows a oil production, equipped with a sucker rod pump (commonly called Donkey pump). For the smallest reservoirs, oil is simply collected in a holding tank and picked up at regular intervals by tanker truck or railcar to be precessed at a refinery.

Other onshore facilities are unconventional production, that target heavy oil, tar sand (oil sand) and fracturing technology for shale oil and gas. Heavy oil and tar sand are producing low value product such as bitumen and parrafin (wax). Besides, it required further extraction due to high sulfur and mineral content.

Shale oil, that's where hydraulic fracturing plays an important role in America's energy supply in new era. (This is interesting topic, author may be discussed special topic later).

Oil and Gas Processing (History)

Oil has been used for lighting purposes for many thousands of years. In areas where oil is found in shallow reservoirs, seeps of crude oil or gas may naturally develop, and some oil could simply be collected from seepage or tar ponds.

Historically, we know the tales of eternal fires where oil and gas seeps ignited and burned. One example is the site where the famous oracle of Delphi was built around 1,000 B.C. Written sources from 500 B.C. describe how the Chinese used natural gas to boil water. The oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China. The well reach 1000 meters deep.

In western history, it was not until 1859 that "Colonel" Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well, with the sole purpose of finding oil. The Drake Well was located in the middle of quiet farm country in northwestern Pennsylvania, and sparked the international search for an industrial use for petroleum.

Photo: Drake Well Museum Collection, Titusville, PA

These wells were shallow by modern standards, often less than 50 meters deep, but they produced large quantities of oil. In this picture of the Tarr Farm, Oil Creek Valley, the Phillips well on the right initially produced 4,000 barrels per day in October, 1861, and the Woodford well on the left came in
at 1,500 barrels per day in July, 1862.

The oil was collected in the wooden tank pictured in the foreground. As you will no doubt notice, there are many different-sized barrels in the background. At this time, barrel size had not been standardized, which made statements like "oil is selling at $5 per barrel" very confusing (today a barrel is 159 liters). But even in those days, overproduction was something to be avoided. When the "Empire well" was completed in September 1861, it produced 3,000 barrels per day, flooding the market, and the price of oil plummeted to 10 cents a barrel. In some ways, we see the same effect today. When new shale gas fields in the US are constrained by the capacity of the existing oil and gas pipeline network, it results in bottlenecks and low prices at the production site.

Soon, oil had replaced most other fuels for motorized transport. The automobile industry developed at the end of the 19th century, and quickly adopted oil as fuel. Gasoline engines were essential for designing successful aircraft. Ships driven by oil could move up to twice as fast as their coal-powered counterparts, a vital military advantage. Gas was burned off or left in the ground.

Despite attempts at gas transportation as far back as 1821, it was not until after World War II that welding techniques, pipe rolling, and metallurgical advances allowed for the construction of reliable long distance pipelines, creating a natural gas industry boom. At the same time, the petrochemical industry with its new plastic materials quickly increased production. Even now, gas production is gaining market share as liquefied natural gas (LNG) provides an economical way of transporting gas from even the remotest sites.

With the appearance of automobiles and more advanced consumers, it was necessary to improve and standardize the marketable products. Refining was necessary to divide the crude in fractions that could be blended to precise specifications. As value shifted from refining to upstream production, it became even more essential for refineries to increase high-value fuel yield from a variety of crudes. From 10-40% gasoline for crude a century ago, a modern refinery can get up to 70% gasoline from the same quality crude through a variety of advanced reforming and cracking processes.

1 barrel (42 gallons) crude oil breakdown to various products in gallon

Chemicals derived from petroleum or natural gas – petrochemicals – are an essential part of the chemical industry today. Petrochemistry is a fairly young industry; it only started to grow in the 1940s, more than 80 years after the drilling of the first commercial oil well.

During World War II, the demand for synthetic materials to replace costly and sometimes less efficient products caused the petrochemical industry to develop into a major player in modern economy and society.

Products Flow Chart of Petroleum Based Feedstocks

Before then, it was a tentative, experimental sector, starting with basic materials:

• Synthetic rubbers in the 1900s
• Bakelite, the first petrochemical-derived plastic, in 1907
• First petrochemical solvents in the 1920s
• Polystyrene in the 1930s

And it then moved to an incredible variety of areas:

• Household goods (kitchen appliances, textiles, furniture)
• Medicine (heart pacemakers, transfusion bags)
• Leisure (running shoes, computers...)
• Highly specialized fields like archaeology and crime detection

With oil prices of $100 a barrel or more, even more difficult-to-access sources have become economically viable. Such sources include tar sands in Venezuela and Canada, shale oil and gas in the US (and developing

elsewhere), coal bed methane and synthetic diesel (syndiesel) from natural gas, and biodiesel and bioethanol from biological sources have seen a dramatic increase over the last ten years. These sources may eventually

more than triple the potential reserves of hydrocarbon fuels. Beyond that, there are even more exotic sources, such as methane hydrates, that some experts claim can double available resources once more.

With increasing consumption and ever-increasing conventional and unconventional resources, the challenge becomes not one of availability, but of sustainable use of fossil fuels in the face of rising environmental impacts, that range from local pollution to global climate effects.

Reference sources:

1. Oil and gas production handbook: 

   An introduction to oil and gas production,

   transport, refining and petrochemical 

   industry

   . 

   Håvard Devold, 2013
2. 石油的历史

New Round FPSO (Part 1)

In the oil and gas industry, Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) is built in ship shaped either it made from conversion or new build. The problems are the motion and vessel stress. However, the industry mitigated this problem by developing turrets and swivels, which allowed the ship-shaped vessels to weathervane. Though swivels and turrets allow ship-shaped vessels to weathervane, they are costly, have long lead times and are typically available from only few specialized designers and fabricators. Swivels and turrets also have associated maintenance requirements and potential downtime (from leaking seals, for example).

The ship-shaped FPSOs are subjected to significant bending loads due to hogging and sagging and, as a result, are subject to fatigue damage. The fatigue problem is exasperated when using hulls built after 1985 where high tensile strength steel was used extensively to reduce weight. The requirement of stiffening steel, resultant increase the cost of construction.

Figure 1: FPSO

To overcome short comings associated with using traditional ship-shaped vessels for FPSOs, the industry is now developing fit-for-purpose FPSOs. The new FPSOs are being designed to have similar motion characteristics from all directions and to eliminate yaw excitation. This eliminates the need for a costly turret and swivels, minimizes the bending loads and fatigue and increases the storage capacity per plated area. Round-shaped FPSOs also have the advantage of being more easily approachable by service and installation vessels with minimum collision risk.

Figure 2: New Round FPSO

One way to minimize FPSO fabrication costs is to reduce the plated area (i.e., reduce steel tonnage) for a given storage capacity. In general, for any type of simple body, the shorter the longest distance between two points is, the smaller the surface area per volume.

Figure 3: Area To Volume Ratio

A simple example is illustrated in Figure 3 where a rectangle having typical length, width and height ratios for a ship-shaped FPSO is compared with a cylinder of typical ratios for a round-shaped FPSO. Both bodies have the same volume, but as can be seen in the figure, the surface area is about 50% larger for the rectangle. This illustrates one of the major advantages of a round-shape FPSO; it can have less plated area for a given storage volume, which minimizes the steel tonnage and associated costs with the plated shell structure of the hull. These savings are even further amplified when one considers that new-built FPSOs require a double hull.

Another concern with converted tankers is crack propagation and fatigue in structural connections. Mitigating these problems can require significant structural stiffening and frequent inspections. Extreme bending loads and stresses are significantly higher in a long slender body, such as a traditional ship-shaped FPSO, as compared to a more compact body such as the round-shaped FPSOs. Figure 4 is helpful in illustrating this phenomenon.

Figure 4: Forces, Bending Moment And Stresses In A Rectangle And

Cylinder Subjected To Wave Loading

Consider the two bodies shown in Figure 4 to be under the influence of a typical long period wave. The figure shows the wave when the trough passes the midpoint of the vessels. As the figure indicates, the center of gravity (i.e. the midpoint) is supported by very little buoyancy for the ship-shape with the buoyancy being concentrated at the bow and the stern of the vessel. This means that the buoyancy forces at the bow and the stern (the arrows pointing upwards) will be significantly larger for a ship shape than for a round shape, where the buoyancy is more evenly distributed along the vessel due to the more compact shape. Due to the lower buoyancy concentration at the bow and the stern and the shorter moment arm (midpointto-bow/stern distance), the bending moment arm is smaller than a comparable traditional ship-shaped FPSO. As a result the reduction in bending moments comes from both the reduction in buoyancy force differential between the center and bow/stern and the reduction in moment arm for a round-shaped vessel.

Oil Rig / Offshore Structure

Type of design offshore platform subjects to water depth, geology condition and cost effective solution. The various types of offshore platform shown as below:

1. Fixed Steel Structure
2. Compliant Tower
3. Jack-up Platform
4. Concrete Gravity Base Structure
5. Tension Leg Platform (TLP)
6. Semi-submersible Vessel
7. Floating Production System
8. Spar Platform

1. FIXED STEEL STRUCTURE


The traditional offshore structure consists of weld steel, tubular framework or jacket to support the topside facilities. Piles driven into the seafloor secure the jacket.
Modern design with bridge linked jackets tending to favour a separate well head platform, processing platform and accommodation platform due to safety concern.
The Fixed Steel Structures are restricted to shallow water developments with water deep about 1500 ft.

2. COMPLIANT TOWER




Compliant towers are similar to fixed platforms in that they have a steel tubular jacket that is used to support the topside facilities. Unlike fixed platforms, compliant towers yield to the water and wind movements in a manner similar to floating structures. Like fixed platforms, they are secured to the seafloor with piles. The jacket of a compliant tower has smaller dimensions than those of a fixed platform. Compliant towers are designed to sustain significant lateral deflections and forces, and are typically used in water depths ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 ft.




3. JACK-UP PLATFORM






The Jack-up Platform consists of a triangular shaped (sometimes rectangular), box section barge fitted with three (sometimes four) moveable legs which enable the vessel to stand to the seabed in water depths of up to approximately 120 m (400 ft).


4. CONCRETE GRAVITY BASE STRUCTURE

The Concrete Gravity Base Structure have been constructed using a base manufactured from reinforced concrete. The design of base includes void spaces or caissons to provided the structure with a natural buoyancy which will enable it to be floated to field development location. Once on location the void spaces are flooded on the seabed whilst the topside modules are lifted into place. The void spaces then used as storage compartments for crude oil, or filled with permanent iron ore ballast. The colossal weight of concrete structures obviates the need to install foundation piles, hence the name gravity base structure.



5. TENSION LEG PLATFORM (TLP)





A Tension Leg Platform (TLP) is a buoyant platform held in place by a mooring system. The TLP’s are similar to conventional fixed platforms except that the platform is maintained on location through the use of moorings held in tension by the buoyancy of the hull. The mooring system is a set of tension legs or tendons attached to the platform and connected to a template or foundation on the seafloor. The template is held in place by piles driven into the seafloor. This method dampens the vertical motions of the platform, but allows for horizontal movements. TLPs are used in water depths from 1500 ft to 7000 ft.




The "conventional" TLP is a 4-column design which looks similar to a semisubmersible. Proprietary versions include the Seastar and MOSES mini TLPs; they are relatively low cost, used in water depths between 600 and 4,300 feet (200 and 1,300 m). Mini TLPs can also be used as utility, satellite or early production platforms for larger deepwater discoveries.



6. SEMI-SUBMERSIBLE VESSEL



These platforms have twin hulls (columns and pontoons) of sufficient buoyancy to cause the structure to float, but of weight sufficient to keep the structure upright. Semi-submersible platforms can be moved from place to place; can be ballasted up or down by altering the amount of flooding in buoyancy tanks; they are generally anchored by combinations of chain, wire rope and/or polyester rope during drilling and/or production operations, though they can also be kept in place by the use of dynamic positioning. Semi-submersibles can be used in water depths from 200 to 10,000 feet.


7. FLOATING PRODUCTION SYSTEM

FPSO (floating production, storage, and off-loading) vessel is converted from liquid cargo vessel or new built. FPSO equipped with processing facilities and moored to a location.

Basically, Floating Production Systems are ideal solution for

• The field is small and marginal
• The field is isolated and an established pipeline infrastructure does not exist
• The field is located in very deep water where it would not be possible to install a conventional fixed platform

A major advantage of FPSO lies in the fact that they can simply lift anchors and depart to pastures new when oil production reaches a commercially unprofitable level.

You may interest:
FPSO - Armada Perkasa (youtube)
The Making of FPSO TGT1 (youtube)
The Making of Armada Sterling FPSO (youtube)
New Round FPSO
FPSO Contractor Fleet Size
BP Scheihallion FPSO Offstation (youtube)


8. SPAR PLATFORM


SPAR is a deep-draft floating caisson, which is a hollow cylindrical structure similar to a very large buoy. Its four major systems are hull, moorings, topsides, and risers. The spar relies on a traditional mooring system (that is, anchor-spread mooring) to maintain its position. About 90 percent of the structure is underwater. Historically, spars were used as marker buoys, for gathering oceanographic data, and for oil storage. The spar design is now being used for drilling, production, or both. The distinguishing feature of a spar is its deep-draft hull, which produces very favorable motion characteristics compared to other floating concepts. Low motions and a protected centerwell also provide an excellent configuration for deepwater operations. Water depth capability has been stated by industry as ranging up to 10,000 ft.
The upper section is compartmentalized around a flooded centerwell containing the different type of risers. This section provides the buoyancy for the spar. The middle section is also flooded but can be economically configured for oil storage. The bottom section (keel) is compartmentalized to provide buoyancy during transport and to contain any field-installed, fixed ballast. Approximate hull diameter for a typical GOM spar is 130 feet, with an overall height, once deployed, of approximately 700 feet (with 90% of the hull in the water column).
The first Spars were based on the Classic design. This evolved into the Truss Spar by replacing the lower section of the caisson hull with a truss. The Truss Spar is divided into three distinct sections. The cylindrical upper section, called the “hard tank,” provides most of the in-place buoyancy for the Spar. The middle truss section supports the heave plates and provides separation between the keel tank and hard tank. The keel tank, also known as the “soft tank,” contains the fixed ballast and acts as a natural hang-off location for export pipelines and flowlines since the environmental influences from waves and currents and associated responses are less pronounced there than nearer the water line.