Standardization is a hot topic in the offshore oil and gas industry, not least in the subsea sector. OE caught up with GE Oil & Gas' global leader of subsea services and offshore Nick Dunn after his talk at Subsea Expo, which touched on the topic. OE is principal media sponsor at Subsea Expo.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing subsea operations?
Fatigue is a big concern for subsea equipment, and is affected by myriad factors including vessel motion, larger and heavier BOPs and extended field operations.
As drilling moves to deeper, harsher water, it is imperative that robust equipment can stand up to the challenges of these environments, and allow operators to understand how many days they have left of drilling operation and how that will affect their life of field. This is of particular concern in the North Sea, but also in areas further afield including Angola, the Gulf of Mexico and into the Caspian
Wellheads in particular are susceptible to fatigue. There are multiple ways to solve fatigue of wellhead equipment, but increasing technical specification can add both time and cost to operations. For example, specifically for material 8630, there are 33 different raw material specifications and 30 different part numbers for high-pressure housing. And this leads to another challenge in subsea operations: inefficiency.
How can the subsea sector look to solve these challenges?
Currently, the industry is relying on bespoke products for individual operations, which is not sustainable. Enhanced systems are chewing up resources, and a behavioral change is necessary to stop trying to engineer a shiny new system each time a new product is necessary and instead offer something flexible and timely.
At GE Oil & Gas, we are looking to solve the problem of fatigue, as well as other as other equipment issues facing the subsea industry, with product standardization.
With many oil and gas projects running late and/or over-budget, the industry continues to suffer from major escalation and scheduling delays. Standardization is one of the avenues the industry can pursue to improve productivity and set new and more efficient working practices.
We’ve taken the challenge of standardization and used it to develop solutions across our portfolio of products. Our SFX Wellhead System is a result of this vision.
You presented on the SFX system at Subsea Expo – can you tell us more about it?
The SFX wellhead system is a standardized, full-system solution providing up to 16 times fatigue resistance improvement over our existing systems for ultra-reliability in fatigue-critical zones.
It was created to meet critical operator challenges, and was designed in conjunction with six major operators, all with stringent requirements, with an emphasis on aligning specifications to achieve one standardized product that could extend lifetime even in the harshest drilling conditions.
Based on GE Oil & Gas’ MS700 and MS 800 systems, the SFX system addresses fatigue-critical zones. It maintains the same interfaces and installation tools of the previous systems featuring an optimized geometry and specific modifications of materials, including pipes with improved material properties and tolerances, as well as connectors with stress-relieving grooves and advanced threads. These are all joined together with state-of-the-art welding technology. In doing so, we almost doubled the number of drill days for this piece of equipment, compared to other high-tech GE systems which gives not only more time to the well, but more options to the life of field to do more drilling or workover before fatigue affects production.
How can the SFX benefit the industry, as well as customers?
The SFX was designed with efficiency in mind and, cumulatively, the system allows reduction of the usual 60-80 week delivery time by 50% from when an order is taken.
In previous systems, the lack of standards amid raw materials led to multiple operator requirements, which constrained our supply chain and undermined its efficiency. A lack of flexibility of raw material meant an inability to scrap any part of a project, because you would then end up back at square one, needing to start the entire building process over with a new blueprint.
The SFX system solves that, as all materials used are pre-certified by vendors before assembly. The standardized use of parts also means that those using the equipment will not need to go through multiple rounds of training for each piece.
Ultra-reliability, quality and efficiency are at the heart of our operations, and we combine them in the SFX system by developing our own standard inspection test plans for all components, which meet or exceed the expectations of major operators. This saves operators from having to provide a third party witness while ensuring they will have equipment up to the highest standards.
Even before the price downturn, the cost imperative of standardized systems was clear. Now it is more necessary than ever. By utilizing modular solutions for offshore equipment, operators can save time and cost to get projects flowing quickly and more efficiently.
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