offshore

Offshore engineering companies are taking existing technologies and lessons learned from floating rigs to create a new platform design that will allow drilling in deeper waters.

The new Olympus tension leg platform (TLP) is the largest in the US Gulf of Mexico, with more than twice the displacement of the neighboring Mars TLP. It marks a leap forward in safety, improved operation time, and increased production capacity.

Enhanced oil recovery processes, particularly offshore, create challenges for produced water treatment. This option reviews technology options and current applications.

I had the pleasure of seeing an announcement for the semisubmersible hull destined for the Jack/St. Malo project leaving a South Korean shipyard for another in Texas.

Plans were developed to produce multiple deepwater reservoirs with vastly different fluid properties from a subsea development in 3,100 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mensa field is a deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) geopressured-gas field, producing from Upper Miocene sand with faulted four-way closure.

The Hadrian-5 prospect in the US Gulf of Mexico was drilled in approximately 7,000 ft of water as one of the first Gulf of Mexico wells drilled after a deepwater moratorium was imposed after the Macondo disaster.

Riser margins were abandoned when fluid columns in risers became too long with increasing water depth accessed when floating drilling units with subsea blowout preventers (BOPs) moved to deep water.

The Goliat field will be the first offshore oil field in the Barents Sea and the world’s northernmost offshore oil field.

With exploration in harsh environments and consequent high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, calculating reservoir properties has become complex and changes in pressure-transient response need to be understood and appreciated by taking appropriate measures.