It now appears possible to reduce deepwater development costs by increasing the distance between new assets and existing production hubs and shallow-water areas, or even connecting those assets to shore. The complete paper presents and discusses the authors’ technology-development program regarding very-long oil-tieback architectures (50–100 km) and enabling technologies. The paper describes how the new technological solutions compare with more-conventional development schemes in concept-selection phases and discusses how the operator is preparing for potential implementation. The authors believe that the capacity to invest in and develop technologies required for long and very-long tiebacks will decide the future of the deepwater subsea industry.
Introduction
Over the past few years, Eni and its partners installed more than 100 subsea trees, mainly on deepwater fields in various areas of the globe, in particular Angola, Norway, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt, and Libya.
