Self Standing Riser Offers Alternative to Conventional Deep Water Approach for Developing Marginal Deep Water Oil and Gas Resources

Abstract

Abstract In water depths greater than 150 meters hundreds of oil and gas discoveries have been made and deemed non-commercial for one reason or another. Many of these fields are in concessions or leases without any hope of near term development because the conventional approach for developing an offshore field requiring a MODU, subsea completions, and some type of floating production system is cost prohibitive. Also, many of the current concession holders without deep water experience feel deep water technology is too complex and risky to venture into without a super-major or major independent with deep water experience as their operating partner. Also, geophysical technology has delineated hundreds of high probability deep water oil and gas leads that will not be drilled because the indicated field sizes are too small. Yet the history of basin development clearly shows most of the big fields are found first and are few. Most of the further discoveries follow a log normal distribution where size of the field reduces but the frequency of the smaller fields increases. The challenge is how to make these marginal deep water oil and gas fields commercial. This paper presents the Self Standing Riser (SSR) technology as an enabling technology which could be the solution for commercializing non-economic deep water oil and gas fields. This paper describes the SSR and how it can enable lower cost drilling, achieve faster first oil, lower the required capital that is necessary to commission a project, and how the early production can be used to provide capital to complete the project. A field test of an SSR in 1000 meters of water for nearly four and a half years is cited as well as the next steps to use the SSR for a marginal field development (see Figure 1 showing the buoyancy device after 2 years). How the SSR provides a new way for intervention in deep water using coiled tubing, and the possibility for developing deep water heavy oil and other applications also will be discussed.