Elaine Maslin reports on how technologies we’ve come to take for granted in the connected onshore world are making their impact offshore, reducing man hours and increasing insight.
 |
|
The AMOS concept. Photo from 4Subsea. |
In most public spaces, there is a very clever piece of kit. It’s a wall-mounted defibrillator, which anyone can use by following simple instructions. These machines have made what is otherwise the work of a highly skilled medical professional easy to do.
Now imagine that system can issue an immediate report on the current heath of the patient, comes with an iPad on which time series data (aka trending) can be seen and a chat function through which the user can discuss (via a “chat” system, Skype or even phone) the results with an expert – who also has access to the same data – based somewhere else in the world.
Sounds good? Norway’s 4Subsea, founded in 2007, has developed such a system allows operators to learn about the health of their flexible risers. The rapidly growing firm, which started life as a consultancy, has been providing automated riser monitoring services since 2013. This year, it has taken the technology to another level.
Peter Erik Jenkins is the firm’s CEO and one of its founders. While initially more of a consultancy, 4Subsea invested in its own in-house software systems, supported by Microsoft, to manage the data it handled. This has evolved into systems – such as AMOS (annulus monitoring system) – that provide the hardware and software to offer health monitoring services for risers. These systems can alert the operator if there is any change in the riser, such as water, oil or gas ingress, so it can be resolved quickly and avoid any potential damage it might cause.
 |
|
An AMOS kit. |
AMOS, launched in 2013, helped to take riser integrity assessment from a manual periodic test to a permanently installed, continuous monitoring system (typically retrofitted). 4Subsea is one of a few vendors offering such a system. Now, the firm has launched PAT, a portable riser annulus testing kit (“a very small AMOS,” Jenkins says), for sites where permanent systems are not installed. The PAT can be used by offshore staff, a little like the defibrillators, reducing bed space and strain on logistics. The staff can have a hand-held device where the results can be displayed on screen and make use of a chat function to talk to 4Subsea (they can also phone or use Skype). The system saw its first offshore deployment in September last year [2016].
4Subsea currently does about 250 tests a year offshore, involving sending two staff out, which can now be eliminated, by just sending the PAT machine out, saving 30-50% costs, Jenkins says. The operator subscribes to 4Subsea’s service and rents the PAT. “They do the test and get immediate results and trending data. The data also comes back to us and they then get a 4Subesa report,” says Jenkins, who previously worked at DSND Subsea and Kongsberg SeaFlex. “The process is also a lot quicker (than sending the team out).” And it’s the only such system on the market.
All the data can also be used across the operator’s suite of risers to help monitor across assets – and can be seen, from fleet wide to individual riser detail, through a web portal (FlexTrack) from 4Subsea.
But, the firm recognizes that being a specialist in this field isn’t just about offering a service. The firm has also been heavily involved in research projects to better understand fatigue and aging mechanisms in flexible risers. This information can then feed into the monitoring service, along with actual data from monitored risers, helping to constantly improve the results in order to predict failures before they happen – or start to happen.
“The key is digitalizing the services, developing automated test equipment to monitor risers and providing the software to monitor the integrity of these assets,” Jenkins says. “We’ve built this based on operational experience we have from managing assets for operators, but also our knowledge and experience from the research that we do.”
One of the research programs the firm is involved in is Flexible Pipe Annulus Corrosion Monitoring with the Research Council of Norway Petromaks 2 program. This two-year project aims to improve the assessment of structural integrity and to close technology gaps on the understanding of corrosion mechanisms within flexible pipes, with the aid of laboratory testing at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) and with support from Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Statoil.
“We’re looking to understand how corrosion mechanisms work in flexible risers,” Jenkins says. “It is a challenge if you have a damaged riser. Many risers, if they have water ingress and are treated correctly, can live happily ever after. In some instances, which are fairly rare, but do happen, the same riser type, with the same damage, corrodes very suddenly. We are working on understanding how this happens and what the drivers are. The ultimate goal is knowing what we are looking for, to use in monitoring systems.”
Today, the firm is looking after about 300 risers on the Norwegian and UK continental shelves. The goal is to increase that number rapidly, Jenkins says, without being drawn on a more specific time frame. Our goal is to cover about 30% of the global market. He adds: “We think that’s pretty realistic with a digital service.”
“From our perspective it is about reducing cost,” Jenkins says. “The industry has gone from being focused on finding new resources to focusing on being more effective with the resources they have.”
Subscribe
