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Technical Specification and Detailed Design Verification
of Flexible Flowlines and Risers

Specification and detailed design verification result in improved integrity and reliability of flexible flowlines and risers.

Client:

Murphy Oil

Location:

Block K, Offshore Sabah, Malaysia

Project Scope:

FlexcomThe first deepwater oil discovery in Malaysia, the Kikeh field is located in 1,350 metres of water and lies in the southern part of Block K offshore Sabah. The field consists of a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel receiving production from both wet-tree subsea wells and dry-tree wells drilled from a spar dry tree unit.

The FPSO was designed with an external moored turret to accommodate up to 17 flexible risers. MCS Kenny ("MCS") led the technical specification and acted as technical representative during the design and bid reviews for the procurement of the flexible flowlines and risers. MCS also performed a detailed independent verification of the designs produced by two Murphy Oil contractors.

MCS also provided engineering support for the riser and completion tubing system installed on the spar unit. The initial scope of work involved influencing and verifying the tubing design, modelling the tubing/riser interaction and developing the installation sequence to ensure the correct tension distribution between the tubing and riser systems. An MCS engineer went offshore to supervise and ultimately coordinate the installation of the riser and tubing systems.

After installation, MCS kicked off the integrity management programme for the full subsea system ("SS") and the flowline transfer system ("FTL"), which transfers the production fluid and injection fluid from the spar to the FPSO. The main focus was to identify the highest risks for SS and FTL systems, develop the strategy on how to mitigate and manage these risks, develop the inspection procedures for the offshore inspection campaign and ultimately to provide an annual fitness statement of the SS & FTL systems. The integrity status of the SS & FTL systems is presented live in "Integrity Status" format via the ThruLife™ software.

Client Benefit:

  • Afforded a strong negotiating position with flexible pipe vendors due to prescriptive specification and expert technical knowledge throughout negotiation process.
  • Achieved robust riser design, which allowed full field design life
  • Applied consistent approach and knowledge to the FPSO flexible risers and the spar steel top tensioned risers, ensuring design uniformity and completeness
  • Optimised the value of the offshore inspection campaign through comprehensive risk-based integrity management strategy.
  • Provided real-time, web-enabled integrity status via Thrulife™ software.