Mooring System Engineering for Offshore Structures

2018

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

The mooring system performs the function of station-keeping and is vital to the safe operation of offshore floating facilities. This chapter introduces the history and background of offshore mooring systems and provides an overview of system characteristics when used with mobile drilling units, floating production facilities, and floating offshore wind turbines. It then explains how mooring systems are designed to enable such offshore operations. The challenges in areas of design, engineering, manufacturing, installation, operation, inspection, monitoring, maintenance, and repair are highlighted.

Keywords

Mooring system; floating structure; mobile drilling unit; floating production unit; floating wind turbines; Semi; Spar; FPSO

Chapter Outline

1.1 Overview 1

1.2 History of offshore mooring 2

1.2.1 Floating drilling—rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s 2

1.2.2 Floating production—deepwater boom in 2000s 5

1.2.3 Technologies—enabling the migration to deeper water 5

1.2.4 Industry standards—multiple codes needing harmonization 6

1.3 Floating drilling enabled by mooring 7

1.3.1 Drilling semi 8

1.3.2 Drillship 9

1.3.3 Tender-assisted drilling (TAD) 9

1.4 Floating production enabled by mooring 10

1.4.1 Tension-leg platform (TLP) 11

1.4.2 Semisubmersible (semi) 11

1.4.3 Spar 12

1.4.4 FPSO and FSO 13

1.4.5 Catenary Anchor Leg Mooring (CALM) buoy 15

1.5 Differences between drilling and production 16

1.6 Floating wind turbine 17

1.7 Questions 18

References 18

1.1 Overview

The ocean provides us with valuable natural resources, such as crude oil and natural gas under the seabed. As many discoveries of large oil/gas fields are made offshore, floating structures built for exploration or production have become popular. Over the past decades, there has been a steady rise in the demand for floating platforms such as FPSOs (floating production storage and offloading), semisubmersibles, spars, and TLPs (tension-leg platform). A key element for these floating platforms is the mooring system, which is the subject covered by the present book.

The vital requirement for a mooring system is its ability to keep a floating structure on station under specific environmental conditions to allow various operations such as drilling, production, offloading, and wind power generation to be safely conducted. It is not an easy task for mooring engineers to design a system to meet such a requirement, because they constantly face challenges in areas of design, engineering, manufacturing, installation, operation, inspection, monitoring, maintenance, and repair [1]. These challenges will be thoroughly discussed chapter by chapter in this book.

This chapter introduces the history and background of offshore moorings. It then explains how mooring systems enable offshore operations such as floating drilling, floating production, and floating wind-turbine power generation.

1.2 History of offshore mooring

Mooring systems are made up of lines, connectors, tensioning equipment, and anchors. They have a long history of being used for station-keeping of floating vessels in various situations. For example, they have been used to berth boats or ships at quaysides, often referred to as quayside moorings. This book, however, focuses on offshore moorings for Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODUs), floating production units, and some other types of permanent floating structures. These offshore moorings have a relatively short history compared to, for instance, traditional ship related moorings.

1.2.1 Floating drilling—rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s

The first MODU was the Mr. Charlie, which started drilling in 1954. It was a submersible barge built specifically to float on its lower hull for transportation to location. It had to run a sequence of flooding the hull stern down in order to rest on the bottom to begin drilling operations [2,3]. It was rated for 40-ft. water depth, but strictly speaking it was not a floating drilling system.

The very first floating drilling vessel to use subsea well control was the Western Explorer (Fig. 1.1) owned by Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), which spudded its first well in 1955 in the Santa Barbara Channel. The mooring lines are vaguely visible in front of the bow in the picture. The spudding from a floating vessel may be considered as the first milestone in the history of floating drilling.

Figure 1.1 First moored drillship with subsea well control—Western Explorer. Courtesy of the Alden J. Laborde Family.

With the Mr. Charlie (bottom-founded) and Western Explorer (floating) as the first MODUs, another concept for a MODU showed up in the form of a jackup. This type of unit floats to location on a hull with multiple legs sticking out under the hull. Once on location, the legs are electrically or hydraulically jacked down to the ocean bottom, and then the hull is jacked up out of the water. With this approach, a stable platform is available to drill from. The Gus I, as an example, was the first jackup built for drilling in 1956 for 80-ft. water depth. In the 1990s, premium or enhanced jack-ups were designed and built, which could drill in deeper depths—greater than 400 ft. of depth.

Shell Oil saw the need to have a more motion-free floating drilling platform in the deeper and stormier waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). They noticed that submersibles like the Mr. Charlie had much smaller motions compared with those of monohulls. They had the idea of putting a mooring system on a submersible, thus converting it to a semisubmersible (or semi) that floats. Thus, in 1961, the submersible Bluewater I was converted to a semi. Then came the Ocean Driller, the first semi built from the keel up. The Ocean Driller went to work for Texaco (now Chevron) in 1963. The unit was designed for approximately 300 ft. of water depth, with the model tests of the hull done in a swimming pool.

In the 1960s, owners of deepwater drilling barges and self-propelled drillships employed mooring systems consisting of chain and wire rope connected to six or eight anchors. Using anchors became a common practice for station-keeping for those semis and drillships [3]. During the decade, these mooring systems allowed floating units to drill in much deeper water than their bottom-supported counterparts, that is, jack-ups. The increased water depth imposed challenges on mooring arrangements. Longer mooring lines became heavier and more difficult to handle. Large vessel offset due to weather could overstress the riser due to deflection and possibly lead to failure. Mooring design and analysis need to be performed to allow drilling risers to stay connected to the blowout preventer (BOP) on the seafloor. Station-keeping became an important engineering discipline, and offshore mooring was born as an integral part of the offshore industry.

Semisubmersibles and other types of drilling vessels went through an evolution of designs. Most of the first-generation units could sit on the seafloor or drill from the floating position. The shape and size of the first semis varied widely, as designers strived to optimize vessel motion characteristics, rig layout, and other considerations. In the early 1970s, second-generation semis were designed and built with newer, more sophisticated mooring and subsea equipment. The design generally was for 600-ft. water depth or deeper. In the mid-1980s, a number of third-generation semis were designed and built that could moor and operate in greater than 3000 ft. of water depth and more severe environments. The displacement of these units went from approximately 18,000 long tons in the 1970s to more than 40,000 tons in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, the fifth-generation units, became even larger at a displacement greater than 50,000 long tons. Fig. 1.2 shows a drilling semi with full dynamic positioning (DP) and moored configurations. The unit can operate in extremely harsh environments.

Figure 1.2 Fifth-generation drilling semisubmersible designed for deepwater exploration. Courtesy of Transocean.

1.2.2 Floating production—deepwater boom in 2000s

Oil and gas have been produced from offshore locations since the late 1940s. Bottom-founded structures such as fixed platforms and compliant towers were initially used, which are limited to water depth of about 1000–1800 ft. As exploration and production moved to deeper waters and more distant locations, four types of floating production systems (FPS) came to play including the following.

• TLP—The concept of tension leg platform (TLP) was first applied in early 1980s. It is a vertically moored floating structure normally used for water depths greater than 300 m (about 1000 ft.) and less than 1600 m (about 5200 ft.). The first TLP was the Hutton TLP installed in North Sea in 1984.

• Semi—The first semisubmersible floating production platform was the Argyll FPS converted from the Transworld 58 drilling semisubmersible in 1975 for the Hamilton Brothers Argyll oil field in the North Sea. The first purpose-built semisubmersible production platform was for the Balmoral field in the North Sea in 1986.

• Spar—It is a type of floating production platform with a cylindrical shape and deep draft, which makes it less affected by wind and waves and allows for both production through deck mounted wellheads (dry tree) and subsea (wet tree) production. The first spar was the Neptune spar installed in 1997 in GOM.

• FPSO—A floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage and offloading of oil. The first oil FPSO was the Shell Castellon, built in Spain in 1977. Today, over 270 vessels are deployed worldwide as FPSOs.

All four types of floating production systems, TLP, semisubmersible, spar, and FPSO, have experienced significant growth over the years since the first installation. In particular, FPSOs have a much larger number of units installed in the world than the other three types. Floating production moved into deep water at 6000–8000 ft. of depth during the year 2000s. Ironically, the year 2000s was also the decade when several major mooring failures surprised the industry, as they were caused by different novel failure mechanisms. Those failures are reviewed and discussed in later chapters of this book relating to reliability and integrity.

1.2.3 Technologies—enabling the migration to deeper water

Initially floating drilling was conducted in shallow water of less than 100 ft., and then gradually moved to slightly deeper waters. Up to the 1980s, drilling vessels were moored in water depths no more than a few hundred feet. During that period, wire ropes and chain were the components used on every mooring job. Technologies in mooring and station-keeping have improved significantly since then.

Now, in deeper waters, drilling can be conducted by vessels employing DP systems, that use computer-controlled, motor-driven propellers, called thrusters, to counter the wind, waves, and current loads. They respond automatically to signals coordinated with acoustic beacons placed on the seafloor. Note, however, early DP systems were not very reliable. DP drilling vessels often experienced malfunction of the system such as drift-off due to power blackout or drive-off due to system (or human) errors. DP vessels are now getting more reliable, and they can drill in waters as deep as 12,000 ft.

On the other hand, moored drilling and production vessels can also operate in deeper water with the advances of mooring technologies. One significant breakthrough for deepwater mooring is the technological advancement of synthetic fiber rope mooring. Polyester and other fiber ropes were studied for deepwater moorings in the early 1990s. The studies showed that polyester rope has desirable weight and stiffness characteristics for use as mooring lines. The first use of polyester ropes in a permanent mooring system was attempted successfully by Petrobras in the mid-1990s. Temporary moorings for MODUs also began to use polyester lines in the GOM in the early 2000s. The first permanent applications of polyester mooring systems in the GOM were the Mad Dog and Red Hawk production platforms, installed in 2004. Today, polyester mooring has become the most commonly used mooring system for deepwater floating production around the world.

In addition to those polyester moorings, there are other technology developments that have enabled the industry’s migration to deep water over the last 50 years. For example, mooring chain has been advanced from ORQ to R5 grades with much higher break strength. Anchors have been improved as well. In the early days of floating drilling, small conventional drag anchors were used exclusively. Today, high-efficiency drag anchors and Vertically Loaded Anchors are available for drilling operations. For floating production units, more powerful anchors that can take high vertical loads such as suction piles are widely deployed. All these technological advancements enabled the offshore industry to venture into deeper waters and harsher