Rapid technical progress detailed to Deepwater Development attendees
The third and final day (March 27) of World Oil’s Deepwater Development Conference (MCEDD) in Madrid, Spain, provided attendees with a significant briefing on the fast pace of advancements being made in deepwater technology. This information was disseminated via numerous individual presentations in five specific sessions throughout the day.
IOGP’s Report 665. One of the more impactful situations was the progress report on Report 665 from the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP). The report, entitled “Design guidance for subsea carbon capture and storage systems,” provides IOGP’s guidance on subsea design systems and barrier and isolation philosophy for CCS. Giving the update on Report 665 was bp’s Senior Advisor for Subsea Solutions, David Saul, who is also co-chair of IOGP’s Subsea CCS Expert Group.
As Saul noted in his presentation, the report eventually resulted from a Subsea CCS workshop held in October 2022. From that, IOGP’s Subsea CCS Expert Group as set up in 2023. The group went to work and designed the report as design guidance and not a required regulation. Report 665 was then published in February 2024. Saul said that at the heart of the report, it emphasizes a two-barrier approach to these systems, to prevent CO2 release and water ingress. Saul emphasized that typical use cases for the report include people new to subsea CCS; projects delivering a subsea CCS development; people desiring to develop subsea CCS barrier knowledge; and suppliers looking to deliver subsea CCS hardware.
Subsea (Part 1) session. After Saul’s fine discussion of IOGP Report 665, the program shifted to the first specific session devoted to a specific topic, this one being the first of two subsea sessions. Kicking off the presentations was Brent Brough, COO at Inflow Control, Fig. 1. Discussing “water management to increase net-oil production with autonomous reservoir management,” Brough said he believes the “easy oil” in deepwater regions is over, but, as always, the real challenge in finding and developing these prospects is still physics. Brough supported his discussion of the water management topic with data/information from three case studies, one of which involved a project with Equinor in Norway during November 2024.
Up next in the session were two presenters from OneSubsea: Arill Haglund, Product Champion for Power Solutions, and Alexander Vilstrup, Project Manager. They spoke to the topic of “Compact variable speed drive – a step change in power density for motor drives.” Their company is working on reducing the size of variable speed drives. They noted that subsea boosting using variable speed drives can generate anywhere from a 20% to 200% increase in production optimization. In some cases, it could generate $100 million in cost reductions and revenue enhancement.
Finishing off the session were Michele Bosciano, specialist in Subsea Power Chain Management at Saipem, and Jose Matos, Business Development Manager at Curtiss-Wright EDM. They discussed the technical gains being made by using barrier fluidless subsea pumps for the subsea seawater desulphation process.
Decarbonization and electrification session. The back half of the morning was devoted to topics affiliated with the major subjects of decarbonization and electrification. Fabio Gallinella, Actuators Engineering Manager at Petrolvalves SpA, and Eva-Maria Pfeifroth, Subsea Application Engineer at Bosch Rexroth AG, discussed the “Electrification of large-bore subsea valves, such as SSIV: Findings and potentials discovered during TRL4 qualification.”
In addition, Brian Piccolo, Principal Systems Engineer at HMH, described how a full-scale BOP electrification test rig is validating E-BOP benefits. Finally, Robert Weeks, Chief Engineer, Energy, at JDR Cables (Fig. 2), described the benefits to operators of using innovative 132 kV wet-design cables for dynamic deepwater power umbilicals.
Subsea (part 2) session. Kicking off the first session after lunch was Emerson’s Global Key Account Manager, Svein Eirik Monge. He spoke about an “Innovative retrievable lightweight flow control module.” Monge described the module’s unique capabilities in water and conductivity measurement. He noted that the development timeline for the device was impressively short, from March 2023 to October 2023.
Next up was Vidar Strand, Business Development Officer at Neodrill, who spoke to the increasingly important topic of “Subsea parking of heavy equipment.” Strand explained how subsea parking can help with a variety of things, including a reduction in the number of BOP runs; remove XT running from a rig; allow more flexibility in rig operations; reduce operations costs; and improve operational safety.
The final presentation in the session was delivered by Lee Thomas, Lead Development Engineer at Worley (Fig. 3), and Freddy Garcia, Subsea Processing Technologies Project Lead for TotalEnergies. It was entitled, “Pseudo dry gas: Asset study and technology development. Thomas focused on the subsea separation angle of the technology, while Garcia examined the economic modeling.
Case studies and lessons learned session. In the final session of the day, as well as of the conference, the first presentation came from Shreeram Lom, FPSO Delivery Manager for Repsol USA. He spoke to the subject of “Greenfield development using existing process facilities.” He discussed typical challenges for redeployment strategies for vessels (as in FPSOs), including hull considerations; logistics, installation and commissioning; and economic and commercial factors.
Rounding out the day’s offerings was Iman Seyfipour, Senior Pipeline Engineer at McDermott. In discussing the enhancement of subsea project design and execution, he provided details from a case study on 3D field development in a subsea XD platform.
Conference wrap-up. Closing remarks were provided by Gulf Energy Information (World Oil’s parent) President and CEO John Royall. He noted that attendance at this year’s Deepwater Development Conference was up substantially, and that attendees were very enthusiastic in their presentations and in networking discussions during coffee and lunch breaks. He attributed the upbeat mood to a widespread belief that the deepwater offshore sector is about to embark on a several-year run of growth and expanded activity. This, he said, would form the foundation for an even-greater conference next year.
Speaking of next year, Royall told attendees to expect an announcement on the location and date of the 2026 Deepwater Development Conference in the next one to two months.
