Offshore Innovation

7/24/2019 Offshore Innovation

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Offshore InnovationThe wildcatters, roustabouts, drillers and engineers who built the

wild world of offshore exploration are to be honored while a new

generation of offshore energy professionals continue to push the

boundaries of offshore exploration and production. ABS, as the

leading provider of classification services to the offshore industry,has played an important role in advancing the technical frontier of

offshore exploration and production.

The old days Emile Brinkmann speaks of are not just the firstyears of his engineering career, when he and partner Paul

Wolfe designed some of the earliest floating offshore drillingunits. They are also the early days of offshore engineeringitself – initiated in 1947 when Kerr-McGee installed the firstplatform out of sight of land and Humble Oil (now Exxon)put a platform in 20 feet of water, both in the oil-rich waters

offshore Louisiana.

Those swampy pools of black gold led oilmen to christen theGulf of Mexico “The Oil Patch,” a name that would come tosymbolize the rough-and-ready nature of an entire industry,and fashion for the thousands of men and women whoworked it an identity of rugged individualism.There is romance in the name and history.

“To do designs in the old

days took a lot of nerve.

Today, I probably wouldn’t

have the nerve to build

some of the things I

designed. I’d be thinking

about liability. Back then,

we didn’t think too much

about liability. We would

just sit down and say ‘we

think this is how it should

be done,’ and then just

try it.”

Emile Brinkmann,

pioneering offshore

designer

A HISTORY OF OFFSHORE INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT • 1

1953S-44

A first step: S-44,designed forthe CaliforniaCompany by Friede& Goldman.

1958Delta Offshore No. 1

DELTA OFFSHORE NO. 1 was,at the time, the height of

submersible drillrig design.



2 • A HISTORY OF OFFSHORE INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

“Nobody who’s busy keeps very good historical records,” says Griff Lee. He should know. A majorforce in the industry for many years, Lee – popularly known as the father of the fixed platform –played an important role in the evolution of platform design and the development of a number ofindustry safety standards.

In drilling for oil past the south Louisiana marshland, says Lee, the original idea was to build asort of artificial island and place a conventional drilling rig on top.

“We began in 20 feet of water,” he recalls, “which was a big deal – unless you had a boat.” Leebegan his engineering career aboard Humble Oil’s second rig in 1948, which was set in 70 feetof water.

It was a time of experimentation, and many strange-looking contraptions were devised to get atthe oil beneath the water.

How did oil companies approve designs backthen? “The procedure for concluding your

design was safe was to hire the best expertsyou could find who were willing to maketheir best wild guess,” says Lee.

The man Humble found, probably the firstwilling to make such a guess, figured thebiggest wave in the Gulf of Mexico would be32 feet. In 1969 they measured a 75-foot wave

1958Delta Offshore No. 46

DELTA OFFSHORE, showing the legacy ofKerr-McGee’s 1956-built RIG NO. 46, thefirst column-stabilized submersible design.

1955Mene Grande

Another early step: the wide,shallow-depth jackup MENEGRANDE, designed for theMene Grande Oil Company.




during HurricaneCamille. In 2005,Hurricane Katrinaled to wave heightestimates of over 90feet. Asked about the sense of securityregarding storms, Lee adds, “We neverhad people on board during a storm. We

evacuated – and I can tell you that I’veslept better for 48 years because of that.”

For a long time, safety was secondaryto secrecy. Most oil companies kepttheir developments, discoveries andcertainly, errors, to themselves. “Fat,dumb and happy we were – the stormsalways missed the platforms,” says Lee.But destruction of about 35 platformsby Hurricanes Hilda and Betsy in 1964and 1965, respectively, led the industry tochange its collective mind and convene thefirst meetings of what would become the American Petroleum Institute (API) subcommittee on

jackup drilling rigs.

1965Sidewinder

Yet another unique

design: EmileBrinkmann’s ABSclassed SIDEWINDERdrilling unit,designed for ZapataOffshore Company.

1963Sedco 135

The transition from submersible to semisubmersible: Walter Michel’sABS approved SEDCO 135 design.

1958Mr. Louie

Classification enters theoffshore scene with EmileBrinkmann’s redoubtableMR. LOUIE, the first ABSclassed self-elevatingdrilling barge.




It was virtually a secret society. Engineers fromrival companies could meet and freely discusscritical technical issues and findings – thoughno documents would change hands – and share

information without requesting permission. It was a preemptive

strike on behalf of self-regulation.

“We made a sort of private ‘show and tell’ out of it,” recalls Lee.“Everyone was worried the government would get involved, so weput on our invitation: ‘No government representatives have beeninvited nor are they expected to attend.’”

Today, cooperation between the API subcommittee and thegovernment, in the form of the Minerals Management Service(MMS, the US Government’s custodian of offshore lands), ishighly productive. Likewise, cooperation between class societiesand the oil industry is marked by its strength and openness. “ABShas done a lot of independent reviews in offshore and has beena great help, especially to companies without sufficient technicalstaff,” says Lee.

1974Aleutian Key

The MODU evolution,the ABS classedALEUTIAN KEY,

designed for KeyInternational DrillingCompany.

1963E. W. Thornton

One of the unique designs from the early days: Walter Michel’sABS classed catamaran drillship E. W. THORNTON, designed forReading & Bates Drilling Company.

“The procedure for

concluding your

design was safe was

to hire the best

experts you could

find who were

willing to make their

best wild guess.”

Griff Lee,

father of the fixedplatform




Lee was a member of the first ABS Offshore Technical Committee, though not originally a fanof classification’s involvement in the industry. “The government has long required a certifiedverification authority (CVA) and the industry has spent a great deal of time explaining thefundamentals to people who are then supposed to tell us whether we’re doing the job right.”

Technical evolution, he admits, has now made class an important part of the industry. “The MMSwon’t allow construction in deep waters unless the design has been reviewed by a CVA and, I thinkABS has done a great job in that area,” he says.

The Wonder of it All

It is a wonder to imagine that the fixed jacket was originally conceived to be a simple pile-drivingguide, not the critical bracing element of the entire platform. Or to consider that the idea behind

Lena, Exxon’s revolutionary cable-supported guide tower for drilling in1,000 ft of water, was actually patented

a hundred years earlier by a Scotsmanwho wanted to extract minerals fromLoch Ness. Or that the semisubmersibleplatform owes its existence to a nownameless man from Florida with acouple of milk bottles in his briefcase.

As Emile Brinkmann tells that one:“I got a call from Kerr-McGee to cometo Pascagoula, Mississippi and helpfinish the design of a drilling bargethey were getting ready to build. This

barge had pontoons that would be jacked down. They weren’t happy

1996P-35

The PETROBRAS 35 (P-35)project involved the conversionof the 270,000 dwt VLCC JOSEBONAFACIO to a floatingproduction, storage and offloading(FPSO) platform for the MarlimField in the Campos Basin offshoreBrazil. The P-35 has a designcapacity to process 100,000 barrels

of oil per day.

1994Auger Designed by ShellOil, ABS acted asthe CVA for theAUGER tension-leg platformwhich hit anear-gusher in2,800 ft of waterand sparkeda deepwaterrevolutionin the Gulfof Mexico.

Photo Courtesy of Petrobras




with the design but didn’t know what else to do. Then one day aman from Florida came into the office. He had four milk bottles inhis briefcase. He took them out and placed them on the table oneat a time and said, ‘I don’t know if this can be done, but I have afeeling that if you build legs like this and build them large enoughand, connect them here and here and here and here, that you canfloat a rig out onto the water and instead of setting it down likewe do now [submersible drilling barges were set down one endat a time], you can go straight down like an elevator.’ Now, hewasn’t a naval architect, he just had a wonderful mind for dreaming

up ideas.”

This led Brinkmann and Wolfe to design Kerr-McGee’s Rig No. 46,a four column submersible drilling barge in 1956. Floated out on-site, its columns would be pumped with water until it settled evenlyon the bottom. It proved so effective that Kerr-McGee built a sister,Rig No. 47, which was later used successfully as a floating drillingrig and thus launched the term ‘semi’ submersible, “just because the

head driller for Hamilton said he wanted to try dropping some anchors down to see if it’d hold inplace. Something like that couldn’t happen today,” Brinkmann says with wonder.

The next step in the evolution of this idea came because offshore contractor Sedco decided itwanted one too and approached a prominent New Orleans naval architect firm for a design. Theresult: Friede & Goldman’s famous Sedco 135 design, a three-column unit that could be a floateror work standing on the bottom in 135 feet of water.

1996Neptune

At the time, the spar wasthe latest step in offshore’sevolution. The ABS classedNeptune spar platform,designed by Oryx Energyto produce in the deepestdepths yet.

“Part of the push

for ABS to get

involved came

from the offshore

industry, which

wanted Rules that

could be in force

internationally.”

Walter Michel,

early offshore

designer




Created by pioneering designer Walter Michel and his team at Friede & Goldman, Sedco 135 marked the transition to purpose-built semisubmersible floating drilling units. Friede & Goldman,founded by veteran designer Jerome Goldman, is a New Orleans-based naval architecture firm thathas been at the forefront of design throughout the offshore industry’s history, particularly withfloaters and jackup rigs. It has never lost the lead in semisubmersibles – its Pacesetter design hasbeen one of the most reproduced in the world.

According to Bill Bennett, Principal of Bennett & Associates, Michel’s paper Sea Spectra Simplified “was one of the first places where wave spectral analysis was treated so it could be applied to adesign in a practical way.”

“I wrote that paper more for my own understanding,” says Michel modestly. “One of my proudestmoments came just a couple of years ago when one of my classmates wrote me a letter saying hewas retiring and that he had my old paper, and boy did it help himout through the years. Now he was a good practical naval architectbut he needed that kind of information. I think this happenedwith a number of people.” Published in January 1968, Sea SpectraSimplified was one of the developments that helped offshore design

make the transition from guesswork to science.

Part of that evolution involved ABS, which arrived on the scenewith the advent of semisubmersible drilling barges.

“I was the first person to walk into the ABS office in Manhattanwith the plans for a self-elevated drilling barge under his arm,”says Brinkmann. “They said it was the first time they’d seen

1999Synthetic Rope

ABS shaped the future of deepwater development with the delivery of the comprehensiveGuidance Notes on the Application of Synthetic Ropes for Offshore Mooring.

New floating

production

unit designs

are emerging

that show a

remarkable degree

of crossbreeding

between previously

accepted designs

to create entirely

new hybrid

arrangements.




anything like it. They asked ‘What’s this?’ and I answered, ‘A barge.’And they asked ‘What do you need legs on a barge for?” Ultimately,ABS classed it. The plans were for Mr. Louie, launched in 1958,which became the cornerstone of Reading & Bates explorationand in 1966 struck the third major gas well in the North Sea forBritish Gas.

ABS has remained at the forefront of offshore technology eversince, as evidenced by its overwhelming lead in the classificationof offshore drilling units, particularly jackups, and its leadingposition in production unit classification. Throughout the yearsthe statistics changed by a few percentage points but the overallmessage remains: ABS has earned its reputation for being the classsociety of choice for offshore units.

With help from experts like Michel, ABS became the first classsociety to develop Rules for the design and construction of mobile offshore drilling units

(MODUs). “Part of the push for ABS to get involved came from the offshore industry whichwanted Rules that could be in force internationally,” says Michel.

Michel helped ABS write the first MODU Rules in 1968, which brought about an unusual situationwhen he came to ABS for design review on his first post-Rules drillship. “They came back andtold me ‘We have decided it needs a five-foot cofferdam and you’ve only got three feet.’ I said‘Hey, wait a minute – I’m the one who insisted you include a damage stability provision. I wrotethe doggone Rule and, I know there’s no mention of depth penetration!’ But in their need toevaluate, they needed some kind of guideline.” In the end, Michel was allowed an exceptionon that design. “There were a lot of funny things like that back then,” he says.

“We had no real information as to what forces against columns would be,” recalls Brinkmann.“We were relying on tank tests of columns one inch in diameter and extrapolating them ontocolumns six feet in diameter. We had no soil tests and we had no computers. We did have thiscalculating machine where you punched in a number and turned a crank. You wanted to multiply

Today, at ABS, we are

not surprised by the

novel designs being

put forward for

classification review.

If we are not able to

review a design to

prescriptive rules

then we take a risk-

based approach for

determining criteria.

2002Sanha LPG FPSO

ABS classes the world’s first newbuildLPG FPSO with daily production capacity of6,000 m3 and storage capacity of 135,000 m3.




a number by 65, you’d put it in, turn the crank five times, move it over and turn the crank sixtimes – we could do square roots with that thing too. We ran moment distributions with a penciland a slide rule – and it took two days. With my first hand-held calculator, I worked out a problemin two hours that would’ve taken days.”

Lee recalls, “when we began designing platforms, there was no real information on how severewaves were. ABS was working on Rules for ship design based on experience, but nothing like an

offshore platform had ever been built. Somebody just decided to build one and we just had tofigure out how to do it.”

Michel has a similar recollection. “When I started in the industry they were designing by guessand by God,” he remembers. “They didn’t have any indications as to what the forces on offshorestructures would be.”

Brinkmann chuckled when he noted that, “nobody even knew what the bending momentswere that these things were supposed to withstand and there was no data to go on. We appliedthe basics and, if the basics fit, we’d say ‘Let’s go’. It was all grass-roots design, backed up by thenerve to go ahead and do it. That was the spirit that drove the old Oil Patch. It was the spirit

of a whole army of nervy individuals who built, worked and bet their lives on structures whoseestimated safety of design and construction was no more than a crazy hunch. If there was a credo

2001MinDOC3

The MinDOC3 design,which incorporatesthree generations ofoptimization from itsinitial conception, wasoriginally conceived byAlden “Doc” Labordeand William Bennett andsubsequently developedover a period of eightyears by a consortium ofindustry-leading firms.

The MinDOC3’s threevertical columns,arranged in a triangular

shape with columnsconnected to pontoonsat first, looks like asemisubmersible.However, engineersanalyzing the design saythe structure behaveslike a spar in terms ofstability.

2003Red Hawk

ABS classes the industry’sfirst cell spar, RED HAWK,destined for deepwaterGulf of Mexico. ABS helpedto shape the future ofdeepwater development byclassing all three generationsof Kerr-McGee’s spartechnology – classic, trussand cell.




for the early Oil Patch it might have gone something like:“make your best guess, grit your teeth, try it – and don’tlook back.” That so much was achieved so safely is a sourceof wonder.

The Pioneering Spirit of Today

Much has changed since those days. The technologicaladvances have moved the design and evaluation of an almostnever-ending parade of novel concepts – for both the explorationand production phases – onto a rational engineering basis.

When concepts go beyond existing experience, sophisticatedrisk analysis techniques can be applied by ABS to determinesafety equivalencies.

Yet the pioneering spirit and vision have not been dampenedas the offshore horizon has been steadily extended. Withdrillships designed to operate in waters of up to 12,000 feet,

2007Multicolumn Floater

The multicolumn floater (MCF) designfrom AGR Deepwater DevelopmentSystems, Inc was reviewed by ABS. Thestructure is a cross between a cell sparand a semisubmersible.

“I consider myself

an engineer at

heart and would

be honored to be

thought of as an

innovator. I like

to focus on new

things. I’m an ideas

man.”

Ed Horton,

father of spars




capable of drilling a further 35,000 to 40,000 ft intothe earth’s crust, the technology that is applied wouldconfound the early pioneers.

A whole new generation of acronyms have beenintroduced since the early days of Brinkmannand Wolfe. TLPs, DDCVs and FPSOs are nowpart of the offshore lexicon and newer acronymssuch as MCF, or multicolumn floater, and MinDOC3,are emerging. These new floating production designs

show a remarkable degree of crossbreeding betweenpreviously accepted designs to create entirely new hybrid arrangements, combining the basic ideasfrom spars, tension leg platforms and semisubmersibles into novel configurations.

The MinDOC is the creation of Alden “Doc” Laborde and William Bennett. It was developedover a period of eight years by a consortium of industry-leading firms with the first iterationof the design receiving Approval-in-Principal from ABS in 2001.

Another innovator, Ed Horton, is known as the father of spars for his vision in developingthe first TLP moored off the coast of California in the early 1970s, and later several generationsof spar designs including classic, truss and cell, all classed by ABS. His design philosophyis remarkably straightforward. “It’s simply buoyancy,” he says. “It’s what happens to a bobberon a fishing line.” Industry insiders will tell you to “stop and take a second look at the scribblingon a whiteboard by Horton.” Why? Because that scribble will most likely develop into anothernew design innovation that will become a future industry standard.

2007LNG FPSO

One of the floating concepts reviewed by ABSwas the LNG FPSO design by SBM and Germanengineering firm Linde. The LNG tank technologyof the self-supporting, prismatic, IMO Type B(SPB) combines with the Linde Multi-stage MixedRefrigerant process so the FPSO facility will beable to treat, fractionate, liquefy, store and exportLNG as well as any by-products from the gas fieldproduction such as LPG and condensates.




Gas: No Longer A Secondary By-Product

Over the years the colorful term “Oil Patch” has given way to“Global Energy Exploration” a wider description that also includesgas. Natural gas is no longer a secondary oil by-product that mustbe moved, processed, re-injected or flared.

With worldwide demand for natural gas as a cleaner-burning

energy source projected to double over the next decade, industryis investing billions of dollars in new extracting, storage andtransportation systems, many involving novel concepts that arebeing brought to ABS for evaluation and Approval-in-Principle.These range from offshore LNG reception facilities to competingmethodologies for the transport of compressed natural gas (CNG)and include a groundbreaking compressed liquefied natural gascontainment and transportation system specifically developed to handle gas produced fromtraditionally stranded locations.

Although natural gas is abundant, more than one-third of global gas reserves are said to bestranded by their location or field size without commercially viable access to world markets.Having provided its Approval-in-Principle to numerous emerging proprietary technologies andtransportation concepts intended to economically develop these remote gas fields, ABS continuesits role of facilitating the exploration, production and delivery of precious energy resources fromthe seabed.

The present-day successors to Brinkmann, Wolfe, Michel, Lee, Goldman and their pioneeringcolleagues, are developing new designs every bit as innovative as those that came before, creatingnew milestones and recording impressive achievements in the on-going quest for energy. ABS isthe constant. The society was there at the earliest stages and it continues to enable innovation withits technical assistance to industry. History continues to be written.

2008LNG Lite Concept

ABS awarded Approval-In-Principle to the LNG LITEconcept developed by SeaOne Maritime Corp. The coretechnology in LNG LITE is a liquefaction process forwellstream natural gas in which a hydrocarbon solventcauses cleaned natural gas to flash into a liquid state ata temperature of -40°C and pressure of 1,400 psig.

The endearing

term “Oil Patch”

has given way to

“Global Energy

Exploration” which

includes gas.

Natural gas has

become much more

than a secondary

oil by-product.



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Offshore Innovation