Reliability Engineering and System Safety 20 (1988) 127-146

Assessment of Production Regularity for Subsea Oil/Gas

Production Systems
P. H o k s t a d
Division of Safety and Reliability, SINTEF, N-7034 Trondheim, Norway
(Received 11 July 1987)

A BSTRA C T
A model for subsea oil/gas production systems, being useful for carrying out
production regularity studies, is presented. Formulas for calculating
approximate (asymptotic) mean values of interesting reliability parameters
within this model are derived. The use of these formulas is exemplified and
discussed for a rather simple example. It is argued that the approximate
formulas should be used in an interaction with Monte Carlo simulation, giving
a powerful approach to the problem of assessing the availability (production
regularity) of a subsea production system.

1 INTRODUCTION
By planning of subsea production systems for oil/gas, there will be a main
objective to predict the operational features of a given concept. In particular,
it will be essential to evaluate/compare various
--layouts
- - m a i n t e n a n c e and intervention strategies
in order to find .the economically optimal solution (among those satisfying
the safety requirements).
For a subsea oil/gas production system, it will be of major interest to
A version of this paper was presented at Reliability '87, 14-16 April 1987, Birmingham, U K,
and is reproduced by kind permission of the organisers.
127
Reliability Engineering and System Safety 0951-8320/88/$03"50 Elsevier Applied Science
Publishers Ltd, England, 1988. Printed in Great Britain

128

P. Hokstad

predict the production regularity. Various approaches may be used to assess

this parameter, as
--asymptotic (approximate) arguments
- - M a r k o v theory
-- ~Monte Carlo' simulation
In the present paper a rather simple failure model for oil/gas production
systems is presented. A set of asymptotic formulas for approximate
calculation of production regularity is derived. These provide an alternative
to the rather time consuming Monte Carlo simulation approach, and a
combined use of these techniques is discussed. It is argued that a
computerized tool, allowing the use of various approaches, (both analytical
and simulation techniques), will represent a valuable tool in the process of
finding an 'optimal" subsea concept.
A discussion of the asymptotic formulas is the major topic of this paper.
The precise conditions for the validity of the formulas will be given, and an
evaluation of the degree of accuracy is included. This evaluation is carried
out by performing numerical comparisons with results of the simulation
program 'SUBSIM', developed at SINTEF (see Hokstadl).
Explicit formulas, as will be presented here, are of course helpful (even
when they are only approximately valid):
---They give approximate mean values for interesting reliability
parameters, and these are under certain assumptions also exact.
Further, even when the given assumptions are not satisfied, the
formulas will usually give lower (or upper) bounds for the actual
parameters.
- - T h e orderh~g(by production regularity) of different alternatives (as two
layouts) will typically be the same, whether the approximate or the
exact values are used. This makes it easy to pick out those options that
should be subject to further study (for instance by simulation).
--The formulas make it easy to make a quick evaluation and comparison
of various alternatives. This leaves more time to perform a really
detailed study of those concepts that are in this way sorted out to be the
most promising.
- - T h e formulas represent an invaluable tool in testing out (verifying)
simulation programs. For new computer codes, there should be a 'must'
to test the results against exact results, at least for some limiting cases.
Those factors (parameters) within the model, having the highest influence on
the availability (production regularity) of the system will be identified.
Further, as a consequence of the discussions, considerable insight is achieved
as to when the quick and approximate approach could be used. Similarly it

Subsea oil/gas production systems

129

will be quite easy to decide at which point in an availability study

simulations should preferably be carried out, in order to arrive at valid
conclusions. Observe that a comparison of a Monte Carlo simulation
method and an analytical method has recently been performed also by
Windebank. 2
Throughout the present paper, a rather simple version of the model is
considered. However, the approach and the approximate formulas
presented here could easily be extended to cover far more general models, see
Section 7. In fact such generalizations have already been carried out, and will
be reported later, see Hulba~kdal. 3

2 THE M O D E L FOR A SUBSEA P R O D U C T I O N SYSTEM

The approximate availability formulas will be obtained for a quite simple
model for reliability investigations of a subsea oil/gas production system.
Throughout it will be assumed that the system is built up of various
'modules'. These will be grouped in a hierarchical way, according to their
consequence on the system, when they fail. The model is similar to the one
used in the simulation program, SUBSIM (ref. 1), and is based on the
following assumptions (see Fig. 1).

Central station (CS)

CS module,

(critical to all production)

Production
stations (PS)
PS module
(critical to all
production on template)

Wells
~Well
module,
(critical for the production
of a well only)

Fig. 1. Model for the physical layout.

130

P. ttokstad

Modeling the physical layout

--One group of components (modules) are critical for the whole oil/gas
field (if one of these fail there can be no production). These components
make up the Central Station (CS).
- - T h e r e can be an arbitrary number of Production Stations (PS) linked to
the CS. Thus a PS is a 'collection of wells', and would usually be a
template.
- - F o r each PS there is one group of components that are critical for the
whole PS (if one of these fail there can be no production on this PS).
These c o m m o n modules are in the present model assumed to be
identical for different PS.
- - T h e r e can be an arbitrary n u m b e r of wells tied up to each PS (and this
number can be different for the various PS).
- - E a c h well has some modules that are critical for that particular well
only. All wells have identical modules.

Modeling the maintenance strategy

Two types of repairs are possible, here referred to as repair by rig and
repair by DPS (dynamically positioned ship) respectively. Thus two
different mobilization times may be assigned to the various modules.
- - A rig/DPS is mobilized on the first occurrence of a 'critical failure" (i.e. a
failure that causes the shut down of production in at least one well.
- - D u r i n g the repair o f a CS module, no production is possible at the field.
- - D u r i n g the repair of any other type of module, all production is shut
down on the PS being affected.

3 THE ASYMPTOTIC FORMULAS

The production availability of a well is typically defined as the proportion of
time that the well is producing. In this paper three measures of availability
are introduced, corresponding to the three levels in the layout of the field
(Fig. 1). These are defined as follows:
Aw = Well availability. (Average proportion of time that an arbitrarily
chosen well is producing.)
Aps = Production station availability. (Average proportion of time when
at least some production is going on at an arbitrary PS.)
Acs = Central station availability. (Proportion of time with at least some
production in the field.)

Subsea oil/gas production systems

131

The PS and well availabilities will depend on the number of wells at the
actual PS. Thus the following parameters are also introduced:
Aw(n) = Availability of a well that is linked to a PS, having n wells in
total.
Aps(n) -- Availability of a PS, in total having n wells.
Thus Aw and Aps will be obtained by an appropriate weighting of the various
Aw(n ) values and Aps(n) values respectively.

Note. The production regularity would usually be defined as the actual

production divided by the m a x i m u m possible production (in the relevant
period of time). In this paper it will for simplicity be assumed that the actual
production of the field is proportional to the number of wells producing. In
that case the production regularity will be identical to the well availability, as
defined above. If this assumption is not satisfied, the production regularity
can not be assessed, unless the actual production at any time instant is
specified as a function of the n u m b e r of producing wells.
Observe that all parameters entering the formulas should be presented
having the same dimension, and throughout this paper all time units are in
years. The following parameters are needed in order to arrive at the desired
formulas:
W i = M e a n waiting time (i.e. the average rig/DPS mobilization time) for
a 'typical' repair at the CS, a PS and a well respectively (i = 1, 2, 3).
Thus Wi is the average for both types of mobilizations, taking their
frequencies into consideration.
R~ = Mean repair time (the time for retrieval of a defect module) at the
CS, a PS and a well respectively (i = 1, 2, 3). Thus R~ is the average
repair time for the modules of the CS, PS or well.
2~ = Total failure rate of the CS, a PS and a well respectively (i = 1, 2, 3).
(Mean no. of failures per year.)
s = N u m b e r of PS.
nk = N u m b e r of wells at PS no. k, k = 1, 2 .... ,s.
s
N = y , nk = Total n u m b e r of wells.
k=l

Now we can proceed to derive the asymptotic formulas. With an

'asymptotic' argument, we here mean that an 'infinitely' long time period will
be considered. In that case the proportion of time that the CS is in a failed
state equals
1 -- Acs-- 21.Acs.(W1 + R1)

132

P. ttokstad

The argument leading to this result is based on the observation that

1.
2.
3.

Failures occur only when the CS is operating, (probability Acs).

The number of failures per time unit then equals 21.Acs.
The average shut down time per failure equals W t + R 1.

F r o m the above equation it directly follows that

Acs = [1 +).1(W1 + R1)]which is a well-known result. Similar arguments for the shut down time of PS
and wells respectively (restricting now to a PS having n wells), give
Acs - Aps(n) = 22.Aps(n).(W2 + R2) + n . 2 3 . A w ( n ) . R 3
Aps(n)- A w ( n ) - )-3. Aw(n). W3
Note that in the simple model applied here, all production is shut down on
the whole affected template, (PS), during the repair of the PS or any well
under that PS. This explains why R 2 and R 3 appear in the first of these two
equations only. Now solving these two last equations, it follows that
Aw(n) = Acs. {1 + 2 2 .( W 2 71- R2) + 23.( W3 + n. R3) } -1
Aps(n) = (1 + 23. W3).Aw(n)
In these two formulas it has been chosen to omit the term containing 22.23
(which is usually very small).
Next, to simplify the formulas, we introduce
B~ = 21.(W 1 + R1)

(la)

/32 = 22 "( W2 ~- R2)

(lb)

B3(n) = )~3.(W3 + n. R3)

(lc)

(The interpretation of these expressions is rather straightforward: the

average shut down time of a well caused by CS, PS and well failures
respectively). It follows that
Aw(n) = [1 + B1] 1.[1 + B e + B3(n)} -~ ~ [1 + B~ + B 2 + B3(n)] -~ (2)
In general Aw(n) is the availability for a well, located at a PS having n wells in
total. Further, the s PS in the field have nl, n2 ..... n~ wells respectively, and
N = ~ nk is the total number of wells for the production system. The average
availability of an arbitrary well then equals
Aw=

k=l

(nk/N).Aw(nk)

(3)

133

Subsea oil/gas production systems

Further, the availability of a 'typical' PS equals

Aps = s- 1

Aps(nk)= [1 + B3(0)] s- 1

k=l

Aw(nk)

(4)

k=l

Finally
Acs = [-1 + B1]- 1

(5)

These availability measures, given by (3), (4) and (5), are rather fundamental,
and several other reliability parameters easily follow from these (see
Appendix 2). A discussion concerning the validity of the above formulas will
be given in the next Section. However, the formulas directly inform that the
really fundamental factors that influence the availability are the following:
- - T h e product of the total failure rate and the mean mobilization time (i.e.
2i.Wi) for the modules of
* well,
* PS, and
* CS
respectively.
- - T h e product of the total failure rate and the mean repair time (2i. Ri) for
* well,
* PS, and
* CS
respectively.
- - T h e total number of wells (N) and the way these are allocated to various
PS. (Thus the number of PS (that is s) of course also plays an important
role.)
This list should be no surprise. However, it should be stressed that the above
list should be considered to be the most fundamental factor to be taken into
consideration for a first rough reliability evaluation of the concept. (Observe
that there is at least one other candidate to this list, that is p = average
proportion of time that the whole PS is shut during the repair of a well
module. In the previous discussion it is assumed t h a t p = 1.0. Otherwise thep
value would enter the formulas.)

4 DISCUSSION OF T H E A S Y M P T O T I C F O R M U L A S
The assumptions leading to the formulas (3)-(5) will now be discussed. This
discussion together with the numerical investigations of the next Section will
rather clearly explain when these formulas should (or should not) be used.
There are two main factors restricting the applicability of these formulas.

134

P. Hokstad

Stationarity
For deriving (3)-(5) the system is assumed to be in a stationary (not time
dependent) state. This means that all variations during time should be
random, and thus that there is no systematic 'trend'. However, in an actual
situation, the system should probably start with no failures at time 0
(availability = I'0), and it will take some time before the availability
decreases to the asymptotic value that is provided by the formulas. Thus the
validity will depend both on how fast the system reaches stationarity, and on
the length of the life cycle of the field.
- - T h e 'speed' of convergence (towards the stationary state of the process)
will mainly depend on the failure distributions (the statistical
distributions of the time until failure for the various modules). If the
exponential distribution is used, stationarity will be reached rather
quickly. (But for the asymptotic formulas to be correct, there should in
fact be a certain probability for having failed modules also at time 0.)
Using a Weibull distribution with increasing failure rate instead, there
will usually be a longer time until failures start to occur and stationarity
is reached. The Weibull model being referred to here assumes that the
failure rate of the time until first failure is of the form
~(1) = ~ / ~ . ( / ~ I ) ~ - 1

Here ~ is the shape parameter, and/~ is the scale parameter. For ~ = 1

this reduces to the exponential model.
- - T h e life time, To, of the field will be another important factor. For the
formulas to be accurate, the time period until the field reaches the
asymptotic state should be short compared with the life time of the field.
Thus for a field with a very short life time the asymptotic formulas
could actually give a rather inaccurate (too low) asymptotic availability
value.

'Multiple failures'
Occasionally two (or more) failures will occur close in time, and the repair
can be carried out during the same intervention. The effect of such events are
not accounted for in the formulas (3)-(5). Quite similarly the total repair time
for a 'multiple repair' on a template (PS) should typically be less than the sum
of the two repair times.
Thus, since actually some of the mobilization times and repair times will
be common for two or more failures, the availability obtained by the

Subsea oil/gas production systems

135

approximate formula will be too low. Three factors are important for this
phenomenon:
--Failure rates. If the failure rates are high, there will be many multiple
errors, and the formulas become inaccurate.
--Mobilization and repair times. Long mobilization/repair times will also
tend to increase the number of multiple failures.
--Number of wells. Also if there is a very large number of units (wells),
there will be a tendency to experience multiple errors.
Observe that the influence of the factors listed above all imply that the
availability formulas represent lower limits of the actual values. However,
there is one exception: if the failure time distribution has a decreasing failure
rate, this might in the initial phase of the life cycle give a number of failures
that is higher than the asymptotic value (and thus give an availability that is
actually lower than the asymptotic value).

5 N U M E R I C A L E X A M P L E 'BASE CASE'
The use of the formulas derived in Section 3 will now be illustrated by some
numerical examples. An exponential model will first be assumed for the
failure times. Further the following numeric values are specified as the 'Base
Case' of the numerical investigations:
- - T o = total life time of the field = 10 years.
- - T h e r e are two production stations with two and four wells respectively
(thus s = 2, nl = 2,//2 = 4).
- - T h e mean mobilization time equals 90 days for rig, and 24 days for
DPS.
- - T h e total failure rates (summed over all modules) of CS, PS and wells
respectively are given in Table 1. It will be seen that all repair of CS is
carried out by a rig, giving a mean waiting time of 90 days. For PS
modules all repairs are by DPS, giving a waiting time of 24 days. For the
wells there is assumed to be one failure rate of 0.1 (yr-1), requiring
repair by rig, and one failure rate of 0.2 for failures that can be handled
by DPS (giving an average mean waiting time of (90 0-1 + 24 0.2)/
(0.1 + 0.2) = 46 days). So this value is obtained by taking an average over
the various well modules. Table A1 in Appendix 1 presents the input
values to the asymptotic formulas, based on the data in Table 1.
Some (200) simulations for the Base Case were carried out. It is seen in Table
2 that there is in fact a very good agreement between the values obtained

136

P. Hokstad

TABLE I

Input Parameters to the Base Case. Failure Rate

(yr 1). Mobilization and Repair Times (days)

cs
PS
Well

365. PP"

365. R

0.06
0-20
0.30

90
24
46

10
6
14

365( W +

R)

1oo
30
60

from the simulations and the approximate formulas. The simulated (i.e.
'actual') values of Aw and Aps are as expected slightly higher than those
obtained from (3) and (4). But it is realized that stationarity must be reached
very fast (compared with the life time of 10 years), and also the total
frequency of failures must be rather small, to give a small n u m b e r o f multiple
repairs.
It should be observed that the simulations have been carried out under the
following two simplifying assumptions concerning the maintenance
strategy.
- - I n the case o f a 'multiple repair' at a PS (that is more than one module
repaired in the same intervention), the total repair time is reduced to
equal the repair time of that component requiring the longest repair.
- - T h e DPS is demobilized whenever a failure occurs that requires the use
of a rig. (Thus there are never two vessels mobilized at the same time.)
The first assumption implies that the difference between the result of the
formula and of the simulation is 'maximized' (a more realistic rule
concerning multiple repairs would give that the results for the formula and
the simulation become even closer).
It should, however, be stressed that for this example there is a rather low
number of multiple repairs, and the above two assumptions do in fact have a
very limited influence on the simulation results.

TABLE 2

Availability Results for the Base Case

Formula
Simulation

Aw

Avs

0'900
0.904

0"938
0.940

Subsea oil/gas production systems

137

6 N U M E R I C A L INVESTIGATIONS. VARIATIONS OF THE

'BASE CASE'

The stationarity condition

The factors that influence the stationarity condition are investigated first.
Table 3 gives simulation results for life times, To, of 2, 10 and 50 years, and
failure times having a Weibull distribution with the shape parameter equal
to 0.75, 1-0, 1"25, 1.50 and 1-75 respectively. (All other assumptions are as in
the Base Case, and the scale parameter of the Weibull distribution is
adjusted to give the same mean time to failure in all cases.) These results are
given a graphical presentation in Fig. 2. (Remember that all results should be
compared with the same approximate value, 0.900.) The results are very
much as should be expected. The accuracy of the formula increases with
increasing life time. Also the well availability increases as the shape
parameter increases, the formula giving a most accurate result for the shape
parameter close to 1.0. In particular:
- - F o r fields with quite long life times (and not too many multiple repairs),
the availability formula gives a very accurate result irrespective of other
parameters not entering the formula (such as the shape parameter).
- - T h e shape parameter of the failure time distribution is a parameter of
considerable importance for fields with a short life time. (In fact this
influence is surprisingly high, a phenomenon that has perhaps not been
fully realized.)
Since a life time of at least 10 years is most common, and the shape
parameter of failure times (for subsea installations) is usually assumed to lie
in the interval 1.0-1.2 (taking maintenance and restricted life time into
consideration), it can be concluded that the 'stationarity' assumptions for
the formulas are most often satisfied.
TABLE 3
Simulated Values for the Well Availability for
Varying Life Time of the Field and Shape
Parameter of the Failure Rates

0"75
1 "00
1"25
1"50
1 "75

10

50

0"848
0"906
0"940
0-960
0'975

0'882
0'904
0'920
0-927
0-932

0"897
0"904
0"906
0'907
0"908

138

P. Hokstad

>1
krr 98
tI

2 YEARS

_J . 9 6
t~
94
5_1
n,,
.92
z
o
9
HU
.88
"7

i0 Y E A R S
50 Y E A R S

" 86

o_ . 8 4

.#5

i.'2s

SHRPE

i!5

i.bs

'

PARAMETER

Fig. 2. Production regularity as a function of shape parameter of failure time.

'Multiple repairs'
Secondly the effect of multiple repairs is investigated. First the failure rates
are varied. Since the accuracy is quite good for the Base Case, there is no
reason to consider cases with lower failure rates. Thus in total the following
four cases are investigated:
Case
Case
Case
Case

1:
2:
3:
4:

Base Case.
All failure rates are twice the values of the Base Case.
All failure rates are three times the values of the Base Case.
All failure rates are four times the values of the Base Case.

Table 4 and Fig. 3 give the well availabilities obtained both from the formula
and the simulations for these four cases. It is observed that the accuracy is
surprisingly 'resistant' to increase in the failure rates. Even for Case 4 (having
unrealistically high failure rates), the value obtained from the formula is very

TABLE 4
Well Availability as a Function of the Failure Rates

Formula
Simulation

Case 1

Case 2

Case 3

Case 4

0.900
0"904

0"817
0"828

0-746
0'761

0"685
0702

139

Subsea oil~gas production systems

>-

.9

fv
(Z
..J

.86

9
W
n/

.82

Z
0

.78

LATION

N-

U
Q
0
n~
n

FORMULA ~ ~

.74
.7

CRSE
Fig. 3.

Production regularity as a function of total failure rate.

accurate in this example. (Increasing Wi and Ri will have a similar effect as

increasing 2i and is not investigated here.)
Table 5 and Fig. 4 illustrate the behaviour for an increasing number of
wells. Four cases are studied in addition to the Base Case, in total having
3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 wells respectively. In all cases the wells are split between
t w o PS. The number of wells at station 2 is always two times the number at
station 1. All other parameters are as specified in the Base Case.
As should be expected, the approximate formula gives distinctly too low a
result as the number of wells becomes larger (due to the increased number of
multiple repairs). By estimating the number of multiple repairs it should be
possible by more refined arguments to take this factoralso into account, and
thus increase the accuracy. This will, however, not be incorporated in the
present discussion, and it is concluded that the formula is rather inaccurate
having a too large number of wells.
TABLE 5
Well Availability as a Function of the Number of Wells
No. wells

1 2

2-4

4-8

6-12

8-16

Formula
Simulation

0.916
0-919

0-900
0.904

0.870
0.880

0'842
0.865

0.816
0.853

140

).P)---4

P. Hokstad

"

92

FF
IZ
_l

.9

(.9
W

n,, . 8 8
Z

o
b.-I

86

FU
I:Z:l "
O
FF

FOR.MULA

84

.82

TOTFIL NO. OF NELLS

Fig. 4.

Production regularity as a function of number of wells.

The allocation of the wells to different PS

The total number of wells and the way these are split between the various PS
is one of the fundamental factors for the production regularity (see end o f
Section 3). The effect of this factor will now be investigated somewhat
further. The influence o f this factor on the accuracy of the formula will also
be commented on.
The six wells of the Base Case can be split between the two PS in three
ways: 1-5, 2-4 and 3-3 (the allocation 2-4 is the Base Case). The results for
all three cases are presented in Table 6, and indicate a higher availability
when the wells are equally divided between the two PS. (There will be a lower
availability at a PS with a higher number of wells, due to full shut in during
well repairs. Thus for the configuration 1-5 there are five wells with a 'low'
availability and only 1 with a higher availability.)
TABLE 6
Availability for Different Allocations of the Six
Wells (connected to two PS)
No. wells

1-5

2-4

3 3

Formula
Simulation

0.891
0.902

0.900
0.904

0.904
0.910

141

Subsea oil/gas production systems

TABLE 7
Availability for Different Allocations of the Wells. (In total 20 Wells
divided between the various PS)
No. P S

No. wells

1-19

5-15

10-10

6-7-7

Formula
Simulation

0.780
0.842

0.823
0-855

0-841
0.863

0.870
0.878

5-5-5-5 4 ....

0.885
0.889

0.894
0'895

To give a more thorough discussion of this aspect, the availability is also

calculated for several configurations, all having 20 wells in total. All other
data are still as in the Base Case. The results are presented in Table 7. For the
first three cases there are only two PS, and again there is a clear tendency
towards increased availability when the wells are split more equally between
the two PS. The average availability of the 20 wells will increase from 0.842
(in the extreme case when one of the PS has only one well) to 0.863 (when 10
wells are allocated to each of the two PS).
Three other alternatives are also studied, having three, four and five PS
respectively. Since the well availability in the model decreases with the
number of wells in the PS, the alternative 4 - 4 - 4 ~
(having five PS) of
course gives the 'best' result. In fact 20 PS with 1 well each give availability
0"923 (from the formula, which is probably very close to what would be
obtained from a simulation).
Of course no decisive conclusions should be drawn from these figures.
First of all there are several considerations leading to the decision on how
the wells shall be split between various PS, availability being one factor. It
should also be remembered that the above results are based on some
assumptions (for instance that production is shut down at all wells on a PS
during any repair on that template). Nevertheless, these figures indicate that
this 'well allocation' is a factor of high importance, and should serve as a
rather good illustration of the well known fact that availability (reliability)
considerations should be included in the developing plans of a concept from
the very beginning.
Finally, a comment on how the accuracy of the formula is affected by the
number of wells is in order. It has been observed that the accuracy decreased
with an increasing number of wells (Table 5 and Fig. 4). However, Table 7 is
a rather clear indication that it is not the total number of wells that is a
critical factor here, but rather the number of wells at the individual PS. The
configuration 1-19 gives a rather bad result for the comparison, whilst the
concepts with 4 and 5 wells at each template give very close results for the
formula and the simulation. Further it should be noted here that the rather

142

P. Hokstad

high availability figures of the simulations when a PS with many wells is

involved to some extent is explained by the assumption (see end of Section 5),
that the repair time for a 'multiple' repair on a template equals the longest
repair time among the failed modules (thus no time is added for the modules
having shorter repair time). In fact there should be a reduction in repair time
for multiple repairs, but the above assumption is extreme and with a more
realistic model for this event, there would not be such a big difference in the
formula and the simulation results.
7 C O N C L U S I O N S A N D TOPICS F O R F U R T H E R W O R K

Conclusions of numerical investigations

As a main conclusion of the last Section, it was found that the formula of the
well availability in practical situations surprisingly often will provide results
very close to exact. Again it should also be stressed that even in cases where
the formulas are somewhat inaccurate, they may be very helpful for
comparison purposes. If two layouts are to be compared, the exact and the
approximate availability values will typically have the same ordering. So
even if the formula does not provide the exact result for the well availability,
it will tell which of the two layouts that have the highest (lowest) availability.
This statement will of course not necessarily be valid if the two models
(layouts) also differ in a factor that affects the accuracy of the formula (if say
the number of wells is different).
In an actual situation it seems that there is only one factor that could
really 'destroy' the validity of the formulas: if the number of wells at one or
more PS becomes quite high, the discrepancy between the 'exact' and the
approximate values could be substantial (see Tables 5 and 7). Thus if two
concepts are to be compared, having a different allocation of wells, it should
be stressed that the approximate formula might give a markedly different
degree of accuracy for the two cases, possibly destroying the comparison.
For other factors it seems that really 'untypical' parameter values must be
used for the approximate availability value not to apply (to a reasonable
degree).
As a conclusion of this discussion it seems that an availability study
should be carried out at different levels of detail, utilizing both analytic
results (as approximations), and simulations.
1.

At the lowest level of detail the approximate formulas are applied, to

evaluate the relevant concepts with respect to the absolutely
fundamental factors, (failure rates, mean wait and repair time and
well allocation; see the comment at the end of Section 3).

Subsea oil/gas production systems

2.

3.

143

By systematically going through the assumptions leading to the

formulas, we identified some rather fundamental factors (such as
short life time of the field, nonconstant failure rate, a large number of
wells at each PS), that may to some extent destroy the validity of the
approximation. It has been seen that the impact of these factors (i.e.
their effect on the approximate results), can to some extent be
assessed by sound judgement. An investigation that really takes these
factors into account should, however, only be carried out using
simulation.
Finally there are factors that have not been thoroughly discussed so
far, and which do not comply with the asymptotic reasoning leading
to the formulas. In a 'level 3' study, time dependent input might be
used, and various management strategies evaluated. Some factors of
this type are as follows:

The production profile varies with the season.

The production is shut down if it is not above a certain level.
Environmental factors vary with season, leading for instance to
different repair times in winter and summer.
Particular maintenance philosophies apply, as preventive maintenance or more refined criteria for rig/DPS mobilization.
Specific assumptions for the length of 'multiple repairs' are
included.
Different failure modes, also noncritical, are present.

The influence of such more refined factors/assumptions should

essentially be investigated using simulation.
There is no clear distinction between levels 2 and 3 in the above presentation.
It should also be stressed that a simulation would give considerably more
output information (as time dependent results).
Further work
There are several ways of extending the approach outlined in this paper to
cover much more general models.
- - T h e model of the physical layout should allow for:
* Different layouts of the PS. (The total number and type of PS
modules do not have to be identical for all PS.)
* Satellite wells (tied to a PS or directly to the CS).
* Wells being different (template and satellite wells may have
somewhat different modules, failure rates or repair times).

144

P. Hokstad

Central

station

(CS)

Production
stations (PS)

PS

Wells

Wells
S a t e l l i t e wells

Fig. 5.

Generalized model ~ r physicallayout.

Thus a layout as illustrated in Fig. 5 should be possible within the

extended model.
- - F o r (some) PS modules it should be possible to let the failure rate
depend on the number of wells tied to that particular PS. Some
components are typically more prone to failure if more wells are
present, and there should be a possibility to specify for instance a failure
rate of the form 2 = 2o + n21 (where n = number of wells, and 2 o and 21
are given constants).
- - F o r each well module it should be possible to specify the relative time, p,
that the whole PS is shut down when that module is repaired. (In the
present formula and simulation p is always equal to 1.0.)
The above points are examples of features that are easily included in the
arguments of Sections 2-3, giving asymptotic formulas that are really useful,
see ref. 3. However, these generalizations could also be considered part of
the more ambitious goal of developing a general computerized analysis tool
for evaluation and comparison of various concepts (to arrive at an 'optimal'
solution). This tool could be composed of a series of independent 'modules':
- - O n e module for interactive, graphical specification of the subsea layout.
- - A n o t h e r module should allow for specification of various reliability

Subsea oil/gas production systems

145

and field data. This should be connected to a data base (which should be
another module).
--Various modules for carrying out several analyses should be available.
Relevant techniques are:

Asymptotic, quick formulas (as discussed in the present paper).

M A R K O V methods (see ref. 3).
Simulation techniques.

Thus the computerized tool should be flexible both with respect to model
specification and choice of analysis. In this way having several analysis
techniques available, using the same user interface, would give a powerful
tool in the process of for instance finding concepts that maximize production
regularity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is carried out with the financial support of the Norwegian Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research (NTNF, project SERA, 9204.16888).
REFERENCES
1. Hokstad, P. SUBSIM: A Computer Program for Reliability and Availability
Assessment of Subsea Oil/Gas Production Systems, SINTEF Report STF75
A86002, 1986.
2. Windebank, E. Reliability Engineering, 5 (1983), pp. 73-81.
3. Hulb~ekdal, J. M.Sc. thesis, Department of Mathematical Statistics, The
Technical University of Norway, Trondheim, 1987.

A P P E N D I X 1. I N P U T D A T A TO T H E N U M E R I C A L
CALCULATIONS
From Table 1 it follows (see eqn (1)), that for the Base Case
B 1 = B a = 6/365,
B3(n) = 0.3(46 + 14n)/365
The calculated values for B3(n ) and Aw(n) for n = 1,..., 20, are as given in
Table A1.
For the Base Case only n = 2 and n = 4 are needed, but to investigate the
influence of splitting 20 (or 6) wells between several PS, the other entries of
the table will be also needed.

P. Hokstad

146

TABLE AI
Input to the Numerical Calculations
n

B3(n)365

Aw(n)

B3(n)365

Aw(n)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

18-0
22-2
26.4
30.6
34.8
39.0
43-2
47-4
51.6
55-8

0'923
0.913
0"904
0.894
0"885
0'876
0-867
0.858
0.850
0.841

11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

60.0
64.2
68.4
72.6
76"8
81.0
85.2
89.4
93.6
97.8

0'833
0.825
0-817
0.809
0.802
0.794
0.787
0.780
0.773
0.766

A P P E N D I X 2. O T H E R RELIABILITY P A R A M E T E R S
Having assessed the average availability/production regularity of a concept,
as described in this paper, it is also possible to estimate several other
parameters. Just a couple of examples are given here.

l.

Number of well failures (that is the total number of failures that

results in the shut down of one well only). This parameter will here be
estimated by
F3 = N)~3 ToAw

2.

For the Base Case this gives 6 x 0-3 x 10 0"9 = 16.2. This is almost
identical to the value obtained from the simulation (16-4 + 0.5).
Total repair time. First the number of PS failures, F2, and the number
of CS failures, Ft, are estimated in the same way as F 3. Then the total
repair time is estimated by
R-to T = F~R x + F 2 R z + F3R3

For the Base Case it is found that F2 = 3.75 a n d F~ = 0-61, g i v i n g R v o v = 8.4

months. This is reasonably close to the simulated value, 7.5 + 0"5. The
difference is essentially explained by the special assumptions used in the
specification of the simulation model, see the end of Section 5.