Drilling

This is a Joint Industry Project (JIP). The purpose of this project was to verify engineering designs for deep water SPAR drilling, production and storage systems. SPAR is a large, stable, deep draft, cylindrical floating caisson designed to support drilling and production operations. The SPAR can store produced oil if needed. Wave tank testing was done at as large a scale as possible to verify engineering design calculations for SPAR. Emphasis was placed on confirming the slowly varying second order responses which dominated the global surge and pitch motions of the SPAR.

Investigate failures associated with offshore mobile drilling units (MODU's) during intense Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. The study will address jack-up units, drillships, drilling barges, and semisubmersible drilling units. The study will also address mooring and abandonment procedures for units exposed to hurricane wind, wave, and current forces and provide recommendations for securing procedures for MODUs in advance and during hurricanes.

Develop a method for examining the adequacy of planned casing programs for minimizing platform vulnerability to cratering. Some operators use a rule of thumb that a well can be safely shut-in when casing is set at a certain depth. However, that depth is highly variable. This area of well design is currently poorly understood. The information generated by this project will be useful to identify and resolve technological and procedural barriers related to well control for deepwater development in the Gulf of Mexico and California regions as well as arctic drilling in Alaska.

The objective of this project was to develop capabilities for predicting radiative heat flux surrounding oil well blowout and diverter fires and the effects of water suppressant. The two major aspects of this project were:

(1) evaluation of rules for obtaining state relationships for fuel mixtures using those for pure fuels; and

(2) numerical prediction of trajectories of buoyant horizontal turbulent jet flames and evaluation using new experimental data.

This is an adjunct to Project No. 26.

This was a Joint Industry Project (JIP) with 15 participants. The objective was to evaluate the technology, equipment, and procedures used by the offshore oil industry to regain control of blowing wells. Traditional procedures, which are an outgrowth of those used for onshore operations, need to be updated as the industry migrates into deep water operations. This project addressed problems and operational requirements of a deepwater blowout.

This project was a Joint Industry Project (JIP), in cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant Program. The objective was to assess the global static and dynamic behavior of complaint risers including current shear flow effects and to evaluate the effects of the principal engineering parameters on the behavior of such systems. The focus was on deriving unified analytical solutions for the linear dynamic response of compliant risers to permit the designer to discern the effects of principal variables and to evaluate alternative concepts efficiently.

Arthur D. Little, Inc. performed a three part investigation of the control of NOx emissions offshore:

1) identification of nitrogen oxide control technologies suitable for use offshore (retrofit and new installations);
2) determine the types of improvements needed for the most promising candidates to qualify them for full-scale in-situ feasibility demonstrations;
3) devise a long-range plan for selecting leading candidates, and determine the costs for developing.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the non-linear aspects of compliant risers. This is a continuation of Project No. 92, which considered only linear or first order effects. The focus was on deriving unified analytic solutions for the non-linear dynamic response of compliant riser systems to discern the fatigue effects due to fluid drag and riser-platform interaction.

This was a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to study the feasibility and reliability of transporting hydrocarbons from the proposed lease sale areas to shore by pipelines, oil tankers, or combinations of the two systems. Terminals and support facilities were considered in the feasibility study. This study was performed in two stages. The first consisted of data collection and evaluation, defining the study criteria, and screening all possible transportation options. Stage II consisted of a more detailed technical and economic evaluation of transportation options selected in Stage I.

This was a joint experiment between the Minerals Management Service and the National Research Institute for Pollution and Resources, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan. The project was performed with the support of the Marine Mining Panel of the U.S./Japan Cooperative Program in Natural Resources (UJNR). The subject experiment is the evaluation of a Japanese patented technique for controlling and reducing surface turbidity and sediment dispersion associated with hopper dredge mining operations.