Back to search

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

RORO (Riser Opereration Replacement Optimisation)

Alternative title: RORO (Riser Opereration Replacement Optimisation)

Awarded: NOK 4.5 mill.

Project Manager:

Project Number:

282398

Project Period:

2018 - 2020

Organisation:

The RORO project shall investigate all the aspects of a flexible riser commissioning/decommissioning simulator, from the onshore engineering phase to the onboard simulator assisting the teams offshore and onshore in the operation.The project will promise great potential, among others, in the Subsea Umbilical Riser and Flowlines (SURF) installation market and will include visualisation effort, advanced physical modelling for real-time simulations, as well as human factor studies. A prototype will be tested for a generic operation in the Offshore Simulator Centre facility. So far, this project has produced a scientific publication that was presented at an IEEE conference and two articles for journal.

With this platform, OSC is creating new markets: new high profile software and installation sold to engineering teams and offshore vessels. Furthermore, the prediction tool will be connected to all operation-relevant sensors, getting all the necessary data to predict the future. This gives the tremendous possibility to follow the operations remotely in real time on on-shore facilities (HQ), thereby selling or retrofitting simulators to operators or oil majors, to perform replays of the whole operation in simulator centers for debriefing purposes, thereby increasing their utilization. Last but not least, access to field real life data as a means to continuously improve the algorithms and as a first step towards automated operations. Subsea 7 will sharpen its competitive advantage with regard to operation efficiency and will have the possibility to set a standard for operations methodology.

Flexible risers are critical components for nearly all offshore floating oil and gas production. They are highly exposed to fatigue and aggressive well flow and subsequently have to be replaced when needed. Replacement intervals depend on environment, loading, fluid content, accidental or mechanical wear & tear, temperature, design life. Flexible risers are replaced or added multiple times during the lifetime of an offshore field, Statoil typically replaces 4-8 flexible risers per year. Riser maintenance represent a significant part oil field maintenance. Because of the cost saving spree that followed the oil price fall in 2015, maintenance of oil field equipment has been down prioritized. As the oil price is soaring, more risers operations will be planned in the close future, potentially to the hundreds of replacements per year worldwide. Replacements of flexible risers are very critical operations during vessels operate which is close to the FPSOs/Platforms. The flexible risers are hanging very close to each other, with a risk of spaghetti effect, with said operations preferably performed without shutting down field production. The average daily production from an FPU is 100.000 barrels per day which in today's market represents a cash flow of 40-48 MNOK/day, or five times the total cost of the proposed project. The ambition of this project is to build a framework in order to bring virtual prototyping project which is developed in our research consortium, for overall riser replacement operation, allowing for concept verification, modelling and simulation and training in a flexible, effective, and efficient, and fast way. Furthermore, the riser replacement virtual prototyping framework will not only be a tool for a specific market, but will be a proof of concept for the whole SURF (Subsea Umbilical Riser and Flowlines) market and potentially for the rest of the offshore and maritime industry.

Publications from Cristin

No publications found

No publications found

No publications found

Funding scheme:

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2