In the coming year of 2012, I have decided to make some changes to my blog, I hope to have some interviews with industry professionals and also offer some educational blog entries in-between the typical blogs I post.
This is the definition from Wikipedia of an Offshore Oil Platform
The next few educational blog enteries will dive deeper into the various types of Offshore Oil Platforms.
Often my blogs involve the energy industry so over the next few months I will be providing a series of educational blogs on terms & equipment used in the industry. This blog entry starts a series on off shore drilling platforms; I hope you find them useful.
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Oil Platform P-51 off the Brazilian coast is a semi-submersible platform. |
An oil platform, also referred to as an offshore platform or, somewhat incorrectly, oil rig, is a large structure with facilities to drill wells, to extract and process oil and natural gas, and to temporarily store product until it can be brought to shore for refining and marketing. In many cases, the platform contains facilities to house the workforce as well.
Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, may consist of an artificial island, or may float.
Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections; these subsea solutions may consist of single wells or of a manifold centre for multiple wells.
History
Around 1891 the first submerged oil wells were drilled from platforms built on piles in the fresh waters of the Grand Lake St. Marys (a.k.a. Mercer County Reservoir) in Ohio. The wide but shallow reservoir was built from 1837 to 1845 to provide water to the Miami and Erie Canal.
Around 1896 the first submerged oil wells in salt water were drilled in the portion of the Summerland field extending under the Santa Barbara Channel in California. The wells were drilled from piers extending from land out into the channel.
Other notable early submerged drilling activities occurred on the Canadian side of Lake Erie in the 1900s and Caddo Lake in Louisiana in the 1910s. Shortly thereafter, wells were drilled in tidal zones along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. The Goose Creek field near Baytown, Texas is one such example. In the 1920s drilling was done from concrete platforms in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela.
The oldest subsea well recorded in Infield's offshore database is the Bibi Eibat well which came on stream in 1923 in Azerbaijan. Landfill was used to raise shallow portions of the Caspian Sea.
In the early 1930s the Texas Company developed the first mobile steel barges for drilling in the brackish coastal areas of the gulf.
In 1937 Pure Oil Company (now part of Chevron Corporation) and its partner Superior Oil Company (now part of ExxonMobil Corporation) used a fixed platform to develop a field in 14 feet (4.3 m) of water, one mile (1.6 km) offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana.
In 1946, Magnolia Petroleum Company (now part of ExxonMobil) erected a drilling platform in 18 ft (5.5 m) of water, 18 miles off the coast of St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
In early 1947 Superior Oil erected a drilling/production platform in 20 ft (6.1 m) of water some 18 miles off Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. But it was Kerr-McGee Oil Industries (now Anadarko Petroleum Corporation), as operator for partners Phillips Petroleum (ConocoPhillips) and Stanolind Oil & Gas (BP), that completed its historic Ship Shoal Block 32 well in October 1947, months before Superior actually drilled a discovery from their Vermilion platform farther offshore. In any case, that made Kerr-McGee's well the first oil discovery drilled out of sight of land.
The Thames Sea Forts of World War II are considered the direct predecessors of modern offshore platforms. Having been pre-constructed in a very short time, they were then floated to their location and placed on the shallow bottom of the Thames estuary.
Types
Larger lake- and sea-based offshore platforms and drilling rigs are some of the largest moveable man-made structures in the world. There are several types of oil platforms and rigs:1, 2) conventional fixed platforms; 3) compliant tower; 4, 5) vertically moored tension leg and mini-tension leg platform; 6) Spar ; 7,8) Semi-submersibles ; 9) Floating production, storage, and offloading facility; 10) sub-sea completion and tie-back to host facility.
Particularly large examples of platforms
A 'Statfjord' Gravity base structure under construction in Norway. Almost all of the structure will end up submerged.
The Petronius Platform is a compliant tower in the Gulf of Mexico, which stands 2,000 feet (610 m) above the ocean floor. It is one of the world's tallest structures.
The Hibernia platform in Canada is the world's largest (in terms of weight) offshore platform, located on the Jeanne D'Arc basin, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. This gravity base structure (GBS), which sits on the ocean floor, is 364 feet (111 m) high and has storage capacity for 1.3 million barrels (210,000 m3) of crude oil in its 278.8-foot (85.0 m) high caisson. The platform acts as a small concrete island with serrated outer edges designed to withstand the impact of an iceberg. The GBS contains production storage tanks and the remainder of the void space is filled with ballast with the entire structure weighing in at 1.2 million tons.
Royal Dutch Shell is currently developing the first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) facility, which will be situated approximately 200km off the coast of Western Australia and is due for completion around 2017.[9] When finished, it will be the largest floating offshore facility. It is expected to be approximately 488m long and 74m wide with displacement of around 600,000t when fully ballasted.
Maintenance and supply
A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water desalinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a floating platform or tanker loading facility, or both. Elements in the oil/gas production process include wellhead, production manifold, production separator, glycol process to dry gas, gas compressors, water injection pumps, oil/gas export metering and main oil line pumps.
Larger platforms assisted by smaller ESVs (emergency support vessels) like the British Iolair that are summoned when something has gone wrong, e.g. when a search and rescue operation is required. During normal operations, PSVs (platform supply vessels) keep the platforms provisioned and supplied, and AHTS vessels can also supply them, as well as tow them to location and serve as standby rescue and firefighting vessels.
Crew
Essential personnel
Not all of the following personnel are present on every platform. On smaller platforms, one worker can perform a number of different jobs. The following also are not names officially recognized in the industry:
· OIM (offshore installation manager) who is the ultimate authority during his/her shift and makes the essential decisions regarding the operation of the platform;
· operations team leader (OTL);
· offshore operations engineer (OOE) who is the senior technical authority on the platform;
· PSTL or operations coordinator for managing crew changes;
· dynamic positioning operator, navigation, ship or vessel maneuvering (MODU), station keeping, fire and gas systems operations in the event of incident;
· automation systems specialist, to configure, maintain and troubleshoot the process control systems (DCS), process safety systems, emergency support systems and vessel management systems;
· second mate to meet manning requirements of flag state, operates fast rescue craft, cargo operations, fire team leader;
· third mate to meet manning requirements of flag state, operate fast rescue craft, cargo operations, fire team leader;
· ballast control operator to operate fire and gas systems;
· crane operators to operate the cranes for lifting cargo around the platform and between boats;
· scaffolders to rig up scaffolding for when it is required for workers to work at height;
· coxswains to maintain the lifeboats and manning them if necessary;
· control room operators, especially FPSO or production platforms;
· catering crew, including people tasked with performing essential functions such as cooking, laundry and cleaning the accommodation;
· production techs to run the production plant;
· helicopter pilot(s) living on some platforms that have a helicopter based offshore and transporting workers to other platforms or to shore on crew changes;
· maintenance technicians (instrument, electrical or mechanical).
Incidental personnel
Drill crew will be on board if the installation is performing drilling operations. A drill crew will normally comprise:
· Toolpusher
· Driller
· Roughnecks
· Roustabouts
·Company man
· Mud engineer
· Derrickhand
·Geologist
·Welders and Welder Helpers
Well services crew will be on board for well work. The crew will normally comprise:
·Well services supervisor
·Wireline or coiled tubing operators
· Pump operator
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