This paper discusses the Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) Interface with the Popeye Project Subsea System. It describes the ROV-related plans, design philosophies, intervention tasks, tooling equipment requirements, testing activities, and offshore installation experiences. Early identification and continuous consideration of the ROV interfaces significantly improved the overall efficiency of equipment designs and offshore operations. The Popeye Project helped advance the technology and standardization of ROV interfaces for deep water subsea production systems. Introduction During the early conceptual design and system selectionphase of Popeye, it was recognized that the ROV Interface with the subsea system would be critical to the success of the project. The use and reliance upon ROV systems for support of deep water drilling and installation operations had significantly increased during the previous 10 years. Shell Offshore Inc's (SOI) confidence in this increased capability was an important factor in many of the design decisions which characterized the innovative Popeye subsea system. Proper application of the ROV Interface was considered essential to the development's cost-effectiveness, installation flexibility, and risk management. The ROV interfaces were a major focus of the Popeye Project from conceptual design through the final offshore installation and in-situ testing of the subsea References and Figures follow paper equipment. An ROV interface plan was developed and used as a basic design and execution guide. The plan was monitored and updated as the project equipment designs and requirements progressed through the natural evolution of project change, Numerous ROV operations were successfully carried out offshore during installation and completion, including some first-of-it's-kind activities. Interface Plan Prior to design of the subsea equipment, an ROV interface plan was developed to provide early project identification and consideration of ROV intervention philosophies, design details and preparation activities. The intent was to improve the overall efficiency of the offshore operations. The plan emphasized [he need for managing the intervention interfaces and associated ROV tools required throughout the subsea system execution. A technical specialist was included on the Project Team for this purpose, This effort involved providing assistance to other team members on all ROV-related issues, providing testing, installation and maintenance procedures, and providing organization and monitoring of ROV-related interface tests. The effort also provided for the evaluation of alternate methods and proof-of-concept tests on major ROV tasks. System-level ROV accessibility analyses were performed on all major subsea equipment to that the ROV could satisfactorily perform all intended functions and to identify any significant access or functional limitations related to the OV. The intent of this work was to check existing quipment and ROV tooling designs, and to recommend odification of these designs only if ROV accessibility or tool unctionality was impossible, highly impractical or highly estrictive
The movement of subsea production systems into water depths beyond practical diver working range presents challenges in the ability to install and maintain the equipment. The partitioning of systems into manageable pieces is critical to their successful remote installation and maintenance. Consideration of equipment size and weight with respect to support equipment constraints and ROV capabilities has resulted in a set of equipment that is flexible in its application to deep water requirements. A complete set of support tooling for installation of umbilicals, control pods, electrical and hydraulic distribution modules and their associated interconnections in deep water has been proven. Introduction Many factors affect the configuration of subsea completion systems. One configuration is a template with wells drilled through it, and another is a clustered configuration where wells are drilled separately around a central gathering manifold and connected to it by jumpers. The following discussion is based on a control system which was designed for a field development configuration based on clustered wells around a central gathering manifold. The system has been configured to have dedicated modules for the distribution of electrical and hydraulic functions. These modules are separate from the production manifold (Fig. 1) The wells are located from 100 feet to 400 feet from the control system distribution equipment. This system was chosen to provide a high degree of flexibility in the installation and drilling phases of the system implementation. The equipment described in this paper has been installed at a water depth of 2000 feet with an offset of 25 miles. Testing is in progress to extend the depth capability to 5000 feet with an offset of 60 miles. Design Philosophy The basis of the design philosophy was to have all components of the control system be retrievable. Another driving factor was to minimize the requirement for rig support and maximize the use of ROV's and ROV support vessel capability. Due to the deep water and long offset distance, a multiplexed electro-hydraulic control systems was chosen. All subsea junctions in the hydraulic distribution system were to utilize metal seal hydraulic couplings. Special tooling was to be minimized. The major replaceable control system components are:Umbilicals - Electrical and hydraulicDistribution systems for hydraulic supplies, chemical injection lines, and annulus access linesA distribution system for electrical power and communicationsInterconnecting jumpers for both electrical and hydraulic functions.Control pods. Flexible Equipment: Control System Umbilicals The umbilical connection from the surface to subsea can be combined in two ways. In one configuration a single umbilical contains both the electrical conductors and the hydraulic supply lines for hydraulic power for the control system and chemical injection. The other configuration separates the electrical umbilical from the hydraulic and chemical supply umbilical. The system described here uses separate electrical and hydraulic umbilicals. The subsea termination is installed first when laying the umbilical. The electrical umbilical termination (Fig. 2) is an oil filled pressure compensated box containing the electrical connectors. P. 367
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