p.

132
INNOVATION IN DEEPWATER
SPAR TECHNOLOGY

p.135
ENGINEERING SUBSEA
PIPELINES FOR THE ARCTIC

p.139
HVDC RISES TO THE CHALLENGE
OF SUBSEA INTERCONNECTION

132 Subsea / Spar Technology

INNOVATION IN DEEPWATER SPAR TECHNOLOGY

by Professor Longbin Tao, National Subsea Research Institute

Over the past two

decades deepwater oil
and gas discoveries have
transformed several major
oil producing regions,
such as the Gulf of Mexico
and offshore Brazil.
There are many technical
challenges to deployment
and operation in deep
or ultra deepwater but,
among many new floating
production systems,
spars are emerging
as a popular choice

SPAR TECHNOLOGY provides a reliable and

cost-eective platform concept that seems
to remain economically feasible up to
water depths of 3,000 metres. The design
and construction of drilling and production
facilities that withstand the harsh
environment and regulatory issues that arise
from operations at these depths has given
rise to innovations in production systems
that provide real solutions.
Technical developments since 1990 have been
particularly impressive. Since the success of
Kerr-McGhees Neptune Spar, installed in
the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) in 1996, there has
been increasing interest in using spars for
deepwater production.
The spar concept has been regarded as one
of the best solutions for deepwater
production due to its many associated
attractive features. For instance, a spar
experiences limited vertical motion due to
its deep draft design, and the high stability
resulting from the inherent separation of
the centre of gravity and centre of buoyancy
allows use of lower-cost subsea equipment
and dry Xmas trees. This further enables the
use of rigid top-tensioned or steel catenary
risers (for example) in water depths ranging
from 300 metres to more than 3,000 metres.
The rst reference point for modern spar
technology for oshore oil and gas
production, the classic spar hull, comprises
three main components: the cylindrical hard
tank upper section, a cylindrical shell ooded
mid-section, and the soft tank at the bottom
carrying the xed ballast.

Above: Launch of Perdido spar hull by Heeremas

DCV Balder; facing page (top): the Shell-operated
Perdido development.
Pictures courtesy of Shell International Ltd

Evolved from the classic spar, the second

generation of spar technology, the truss spar,
was rst installed at the Nansen and
Boomvang eld (GoM) in more than 900

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metres of water. Unlike the classic spar, the

reduced size and weight of the truss spar
generally facilitates construction and
transportation of the hull in one piece,
leading to a further reduction in project cost.
The more cost-ecient design of the truss
spar, principally due to ease of fabrication
and exibility, led to the third generation of
spar technology, the cell spar. The rst was
deployed in Red Hawk eld (GoM) by KerrMcGee. It indeed provided another option to
reduce the reserve threshold for economic
development of deepwater elds. Instead of
a single, large diameter cylinder for the
classic and truss spar hulls, the cell spar hull
is composed of a number of small cylinders
(cells) joined in a symmetric pattern.
By January (2010), there were a total of
17 spars currently in service, with all deployed
in the US except the Kikeh truss spar, installed
in oshore Malaysia in 2007. In August 2008,
Shell launched the worlds deepest production
spar as part of their Perdido regional
development in the GoM. This truss spar with
direct vertical access wells is moored in about
2,500 metres of water and exports production
from three elds: Great White, Tobago and
Silvertip, within a 15 km radius.
An important phase in spar development
projects is that the spar needs to be
transported either wet or dry to an
oshore site for launching, and the
subsequent installation of a deck module
onto the spar hull. The spar installation is
normally carried out in three phases: rst
the mooring system, then the spar hull, and
nally the topsides. In addition to the
mooring system, the process of spar
installation at the target site involves several
distinct operations including load-out,
transportation, launching of spar hull and

Subsea / Spar Technology 133

mating, referring to the installation of the
topside module on the spar hull. Highly
bespoke engineering processes, both
launching and mating operations, are often
carried out with heaving lifting platforms.
Being used for drilling, production, or both,
spar designs have become a genuinely
attractive solution for deepwater oshore oil
and gas development. In particular, the
favourable motion characteristics due to its
deep-draft hull design, and the protected
centre well, both provide an excellent
conguration for deepwater operations.
Nonetheless, there are a number of issues
that often cause concern in engineering the
design and operation of spar projects.
Spar platforms with a cylindrical shape and
constant cross-section area may experience
resonant heave motions in sea states with
long peak periods, as often occur oshore
West Africa and in the North Sea, which are
probably excessive for riser integrity due to
low damping and relatively low natural heave
period. This partly explains why the application
of spar technology is still predominantly in
the GoM. Designed as a vertical cylindrical
shape, the spar structure is subject to vortexinduced motions (VIM) when ocean current
velocities at the project site exceed a few
knots. Although all spars have been constructed
with helical strakes to mitigate VIM, such
motion may still cause fatigue-induced
failures to riser and mooring systems.
Spar hulls are designed with a deep draft to
minimise the heave and pitch responses of
the system, thereby permitting installation
of rigid risers with dry Xmas trees. However,
Mathieu instability conditions may arise for
a spar platform when there is a harmonic
variation in the pitch, restoring coecients
caused by a large heave motion, with the
period of the heave motion approximately
half of the pitch natural period. A kind of
lock-in phenomenon, Mathieu instability
linked to a spar can lead to a signicant
increase in pitch motion. Further research is
warranted to provide better understanding
of the phenomena and development of
innovative approaches to suppressing both
the VIM and the instability.

IN FOCUS: PERDIDO SPAR

There has been considerable
capability build-up related to
deepwater offshore installation
over the years, including both
equipment development and
installation procedures. The
Shell-operated Perdido spar
project, in about 2,500 metres of
water in the remote area of the
GoM, offers a typical example.
There are 22 direct vertical
access wells from the spar,
with eight additional tiebacks
from subsea completions.
The Perdido spar features a drilling rig and direct vertical access wells, as well as full oil
and gas processing, and serves remote subsea wells. Peak production is expected to
reach 130,000 bbl/d, exported to shore by new and existing pipelines. Technip supplied
umbilicals for Perdido, as well as the spar hull and mooring system, in the process setting
two new industry records of its own: the deepest reeled owline installation (in 2,961
metres of water) and deepest reeled steel catenary riser installation (2,469 metres).
In October 2008, Heeremas deepwater construction vessel DCV Balder completed the
spar and subsea installation, comprising nine suction piles and polyester mooring lines.
The water depth at Perdido required upgrading of some of Balders equipment for the
spar and subsea installation phase, including replacement of the A & R wire by one
4,000 metres long and 5.5 inch diameter, the L & P wire with one 400 metres long and
4.5 inch diameter, the crane wires with two of 19,000 metres, and an upgrading of the
vessels ROV frame and winch capacity.
With the use of very accurate positioning equipment, the upgraded Balder has the ability
to change project modes between pipelay to facility installation, and signicantly minimises
the potential for external environmental, weather and construction-related project delays.
Moreover, working procedures for the project execution were rened to such an extent
that change-over between the pipelay mode and handling mode was reduced from a period
of at least ve days downtime to just one day. This was mainly down to integrated planning,
enabling the installation team to carry out several tasks simultaneously. In March 2009,
in the nal phase of the installation, Heeremas giant semi-submersible crane vessel,
Thialf mated the spar platforms 9,500-ton topsides to the spar hull in a single lift.
The conduct of the installation operations for the Perdido Spar during hurricane season
also placed signicant additional challenges to the project team, requiring rigorous
hurricane evacuation plans to be in place. In fact three hurricanes were experienced
during the rst phase of installation in 2008, requiring that Balder leave the Perdido site,
returning ve to six days later to continue installation.

Spar technology has been evolving alongside

subsea and riser technology to meet new
eld development challenges, mainly related
to increased water depth, reservoir operating
pressures and temperatures. Improvements
will continue as new developments in oshore
technology are incorporated into the designs.
Research and development eort will be
mainly focused on addressing technical
issues mentioned above and improved cost
competitiveness. In fact, the industry R&D
sector is already working on the so-called
fourth generation spar technology. An example
is the recent development of the Ring Spar,
aimed at cost eectiveness with improved
safety design and enhanced constructability,
while retaining the hydrodynamic
characteristics of the existing truss spar design.

Offshore spar platform development.

Picture courtesy of Technip

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