Offshore Engineering

The drilling and production conducted offshore have always been considered a highly complicated and also very technically challenging operations. With the rapid increase in the drilling activities seen in the late seventeens and early eighteens the demand for much more technically qualified and specialized personnel have appeared- there was a demand for the people who could properly design and execute all the phases of both drilling and production processes.

However, it has become very difficult for the people to get a proper general technical overview of the complete scope of the activities. The main intention of the present book it to try and present all interested readers with the detailed examination of the specialized modern techniques together with the designs and materials, providing the participants of the offshore industry with the comprehensive overview of drilling/production operations conducted offshore.

Nowadays, taking into account the constantly increasing demand for the oil, the offshore drilling and production activities concentrate in the increasingly difficult--to-access areas. The offshore oil wells are not considered novelties any more. In addition, the future technical developments in the field of oil recovery offshore will definitely bring even more changes o the production sciences that shall be taken into consideration by the designers...

Corrosion is something generally accepted by all participants of the offshore industry as the critically important issue. This report is mainly dealing with the technical developments of the top-level corrosion strategy specifically worked out for all topside processing facilities located offshore.

The associated project has been originally conceived as a fundamental and route study conducted to establish the basic requirements relating to the assessment/management of the corrosion risks related to the production of the oilfields and equipment used for the transportation of the oil. The underlying objective throughout this work was proper identification of requirements for the guidelines combining the best industry practices from the HSE, corrosion and also the asset integrity management.

The approach adopted tasks consider the relevant offshore regulations together with the risk control systems. The main summary of this work was that development of the corrosion risk guidelines was quite feasible and would definitely be welcomed by the offshore industry. Corrosion itself is a serious life-limiting factor causing the deterioration of the offshore structures by general wastage and pitting/cracking leading directly to the loss of containment of the processing fluids...

Production of both oil and gas offshore involves the most sophisticated engineering projects and is considered a prime source of income for many countries and commercial entities. It shall be noted that the risks of the major offshore accidents demonstrated by such the famous disasters such as the Piper Alpha, Alexander Kielland, Ocean Ranger and Sleipner A are also involved.

Subject accidents are representing the ultimate way in which the offshore engineering projects could go wrong. Among such accidents we would note the human death and suffering, environment pollution and commercial problems. The QRA, standing for the quantitative risk assessment, addressed in this publication, is a new technique cutting across the traditional divisions of engineering, applying to all of them. Most of the textbooks addressing this technique are relating to the fields on chemical/nuclear engineering and currently there is no any standard reference volumes that would provide the proper guidance on the offshore risk assessment.

The objective of this guide is to give an introduction to the QRA as applied to the offshore industry, aiming to introduce all most important aspects of the QRA and describing the good contemporary practice in offshore QRA, including selection of the data and more or less simple analytical techniques to be used...