Annular Integrity Management Using PipeACOM System in Flexible Pipes

Abstract

Flexible pipe systems are extensively used in the oil and gas offshore production segment due to its ease of transport and installation, design versatility and performance, especially in deep and ultra-deepwater fields. The criticality of the system and the difficulty of having an accurate lifetime prediction using current inspection tools require the flexible pipe design to have a very high safety factor, which may lead to overdesign and/or uncertainty on the actual damage state of a pipe in operation. The annular environment condition of flexible pipes has a big impact on the consumption of its operational life due to seawater ingress or bore fluid gas permeation. In order to better understand and mitigate the associated failure mechanisms we developed, built, and commissioned PipeACOM, the Flexible Pipe Annular Control Manifold, with the objective of connecting the annular regions of adjacent flexible pipes, control its flow and monitor the annular environment throughout the life of the flexible pipe system. In this paper we describe the main features of the PipeACOM system, present the setup and experimental results of the validation tests performed in a prototype system installed in a production flowline at the Brazilian pre-salt fields at over 2300 meters of water depth, reaching the Technology Readiness Level of 6 based on API RP 17N criteria and earning the 2020 National Technology Innovation award by the Brazilian National Petroleum Agency (ANP).