Going subsea

Offshore exploration is an especially difficult and challenging aspect of the pursuit of hydrocarbons. O&G quizzes Jan Strom of Subsea Norway AS on the key trends his company is witnessing.

With oil and gas companies working in ever-increasing difficult environments, what are the main challenges they face with their subsea equipment and production systems?
Jan Strom. With the ever-changing climate there are many new challenges to cope with, such as increased wind and currents offshore. Flexible risers, umbilicals and mooring equipment will see increased motion related stress, floating production and storage units will have changed patterns of movement. And this will increase more stress and cause a higher risk for fatigue on production lines. We have seen several fields where risers and anchor chains start to interfere with each other. Many low cost subsea developments with only topside control systems (riser and umbilical to each well) will face these new challenges, calling for fewer risers and the need to introduce subsea control systems to reduce this risk.

How does technology help your work in proving subsea services for your clients?
JS. Subsea Norway has a high focus on Life Cycle Management and a key item is to have a good PLM system to have full traceability of all deliverables, changes, modifications throughout a subsea fields lifetime. The recent years behind us with extreme high activity has been a challenge to quality of products delivered. We have all experienced quality issues with all kinds of components, from steel structures, bolts, valves and so on. However, this kind of risk can be reduced by having a good track of the equipment. There is a major difference in changing 10 bolts on a live production line instead of changing several thousand if you have lost track of where the different material has been installed.

Can you give a recent example of how you aided a client with their subsea work ?
JS. One of our recent clients has is operating a ‘brown’ oilfield which produce light crude oil and some gas. The field is at the present time developed by ‘hard wiring’ each Xmas tree directly to a production unit and offloading and shipping with a separate FSO. The owners are looking for a cost effective solution to expand the field and need a new subsea infra structure for this expansion, which is planned to be hooked up to a FPSO. This is done to decrease production downtime due to weather and fatigue problems with production flowlines. By offering one of our fast track solutions we combine the re-use of existing equipment and adding some new, such as choke bridge modules and subsea distribution of hydraulics and power/signal. This gives a robust, easy maintainable and cost effective solution to extend an oilfield’s lifetime and extend production capabilities. And that is one of Subsea Norway’s core technologies – refurbishment of subsea equipment and adding value for our clients.

What plans do you have for your business in the coming years and how will the Middle East fit into these plans?
JS. With reduced activity in the North Sea area our focus is more worldwide and we are planning to establish us as a key supplier of subsea engineering in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. We are especially focusing on extension of existing ‘brown’ fields by introducing low cost and robust add-on solutions to increase hydrocarbon recovery. Key is the re-use of previously installed equipment and refurbishment of equipment done subsea in order to increase lifetime of equipment. Lower CAPEX – higher ROI.

Jan Strom, who has an engineering degree in Marine Engineering and Electronics, is the Managing Director of Subsea Norway AS. Strom has been working with subsea engineering offshore and onshore for more than 20 years and was the co-founder of the Norwegian AMEK group.