scholarly journals Kicking the OPEC Habit

2000 ◽  
Vol 122 (05) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Michael Valenti

This article highlights that major offshore oil and gas projects may help North America reduce its dependence on the oil cartel. When members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut their production by 4 million barrels per day from March 1999 to March 2000, they tripled oil prices, from $11 to $33 per barrel. The combination of higher gasoline, diesel, and heating oil prices led President Clinton and Congress to pressure the OPEC countries to increase their production. Spar technology has been used for 25 years for loading buoys and storage vessels. The spar is a floating system, basically a cylinder on end that maintains its position with mooring lines sunk into the seabed. Many offshore oilfields are beyond the reach of underwater pipelines. This is an opportunity seized by SOFEC Inc. in Houston. Since 1972, the company, a subsidiary of the FMC Corp., has designed equipment to support floating production storage and offloading systems. These systems consist of a floating platform, basically a moored ship-shaped vessel, equipped to accept oil and gas from a drilling system on the sea bed.

Author(s):  
Xiaozhi Wang ◽  
Booki Kim ◽  
Yanming Zhang ◽  
Ping Liao

Floating production, storage and offloading systems (FPSOs) have been widely used in the development of offshore oil and gas fields because of their many attractive features. These features include a large work area and storage capacity, mobility (if desired), relatively low construction cost and good stability. They are mostly ship shaped, either converted from existing tankers or purpose built. The hull structural scantling design for tankers may be applicable to FPSOs; however, FPSOs have their own unique characteristics. FPSOs are located at specific locations with a dynamic loading that is quite different from that arising from unrestricted ocean service conditions for tankers. It is also noted that the wave conditions in recent FPSO applications may be very complicated when operating in areas such as those offshore West Africa and offshore Brazil where both seas and swells exist and propagate in different directions. In this paper, the unique FPSO operational aspects, especially the load assessment due to on-site environments will be described. The methodology of handling complicated wave conditions in fatigue assessment will be addressed. Special considerations for converted FPSOs, which need to take into account their operational history as a trading tanker and low cycle fatigue due to FPSO operations, will also be introduced. Case studies will be presented and appropriate analysis methodology will be summarized. The methodology has also been adopted by ABS Guide, see ABS [1].


1988 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Abu Azam Md. Yassin

Malaysia has long been victim of oil pollution well before the start of her own offshore exploitation of oil. With the effort to exploit offshore oil and gas, Malaysia has now become causer of pollution herself. Legislation existed for oil pollution prevention and control, along each and every stage of offshore petroleum operations which include exploration, development, production, transportation, treatment and storage. But procedures to explain the existing legislation is lacking and hence it is important to expound the existing legislation for controlling and preventing oil pollution from offshore operation in line with current practices around the world.


Subject The outlook for offshore oil. Significance A recent offshore oil and gas find has given Guyana hope of becoming a significant oil producer. However, while this and an earlier find are encouraging and further exploration is planned, the current uncertain economic environment and fluctuating oil prices suggest that bringing these finds into production is not guaranteed. Impacts Oil exploration activity may prompt a flare-up of the continuing border dispute with Venezuela. A major offshore oil find would have a very significant impact on Guyana's GDP of some 4 billion dollars. However, over-optimism could lead to borrowing against an expected future windfall, or the temptation to prioritise 'vanity' projects.


Author(s):  
Chingiz Saibovich Guseinov ◽  
Dmitry Leonidovich Kulpin ◽  
Galie Hamzaevna Efimova

The article dwells upon the problem of developing offshore oil and gas fields around the world accompanied by producing not only stationary and semi-submersible rigs and drilling vessels, but also a large number of auxiliary vessels for various functional purposes. It would be impossible to extract offshore hydrocarbons under the sea bed without them. Special fleet was formed during the years of development of offshore oil and gas fields in the Russian Federation, the part of it being imported. In the upcoming years, our country will face some challenges related to the development of Arctic reservoirs which are mainly located in the long-frozen deep seas. Their development in deep water will only be possible with auxiliary fleet, as it will be necessary to build deep water drilling vessels and other facilities/vessels. The types of vessels of the modern oil and gas fleet are presented, depending on the area of navigation, the depth of use and the specifics of the work performed. It is noted that currently in world practice there are no examples of using proven drilling and production technologies in severe ice conditions, when ice thickness exceeds 2-3 m, because the modern ice-resistant stationary platforms can not withstand the load at a depth of more than 80-100 m. The auxiliary fleet will both service offshore rigs and ensure their long-term productivity and functionality. For the development of oil and gas fields in the long-frozen Arctic deep-sea areas it is necessary to create a full-fledged underwater oil and gas fleet.


Author(s):  
Celso K. Morooka ◽  
Fa´bio M. Coelho ◽  
Elton J. B. Ribeiro ◽  
Jose´ A. Ferrari ◽  
Ricardo Franciss

In the last years, the most of offshore oil and gas reserves discoveries in Brazil are placed in ultra-deep water depths. Petroleum production from these offshore fields needs developments with novel solutions in terms of necessary technologies and economical viability. The use of vertical rigid risers such as top tensioned risers (TTR) and others like combined systems as self standing hybrid risers and steel catenary risers for ultra-deep waters have shown viable from both, technical and economical aspects. However, there are needs for detailed studies on their dynamic behavior in order to improve, particularly, the understanding of influence of the environment as wave and current, and floating platform oscillations at the riser top. The present work presents studies on vertical top tensioned riser dynamic behavior through time domain simulations of its displacements and respective, bending moments and stresses. Influences of the vortex induced vibrations (VIV) and waves on the riser service life reduction are analyzed. Maximum and minimum envelops for displacements and stresses along riser length are shown.


1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (17) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
N. Jothishankar ◽  
V. Sundar

Transportation of offshore oil and gas is mostly carried out by means of offshore pipelines. Depending on the ocean environment these pipelines are either buried or made to rest on the ocean bed or placed on excavated trenches. In cases where the sea bed is mostly of rock, pipelines can be laid on the bed and anchored to the ocean floor by suitable supports. In certain instances pipelines are also placed on saddles leaving a clearance between pipe and the sea floor. The design of these pipelines requires an accurate assessment of wave induced loads acting on them. The objective of this paper is to present the experimental results of wave forces exerted on a model pipeline, of diameter 5 cms at different clearances from the bed of the flume. Hydrodynamic coefficients namely Drag and Inertia are computed from the measured forces and their correlation with the non-dimensional parameters, Reynold's Number, Keulegan-Carpenter Number and relative clearance from the bed are presented.


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