Oil platform

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ExxonMobil's Beryl Alpha, located in the North Sea

An oil platform is a large structure used to house workers and machinery needed to drill and then produce oil and natural gas in the ocean. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be attached to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or be floating.

Generally, oil platforms are located on the continental shelf, though as technology improves, drilling and production in deeper waters becomes both feasible and profitable. A typical platform may have around thirty wellheads located on the platform and directional drilling allows reservoirs to be accessed at both different depths and at remote positions up to 5 miles (8 kilometres) from the platform.

Many platforms also have remote wellheads attached by umbilical connections, these may be single wells or a manifold centre for multiple wells.

1 Platform types
2 Maintenance and supply
3 Risks
4 Environmental effects
5 Large platforms
6 History
7 Tallest oil platforms
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Platform types

Gulf offshore platform, detailed image

Larger lake- and sea-based oil platforms and oil rigs are some of the largest moveable man-made structures in the world. There are several distinct types of platforms and rigs:.

Fixed Platforms, built on concrete and/or steel legs anchored directly onto the seabed, supporting a deck with space for drilling rigs, production facilities and crew quarters. Such platforms are, by virtue of their immobility, designed for very long term use (for instance the Hibernia platform). Various types of structure are used, steel jacket, concrete caisson, floating steel and even floating concrete. Steel jackets are vertical sections made of tubular steel members, and are usually piled into the seabed. Concrete caisson structures, pioneered by the Condeep concept, often have in-built oil storage in tanks below the sea surface and these tanks were often used as a flotation capability, allowing them to be built close to shore (Norwegian fjords and Scottish firths are popular because they are sheltered and deep enough) and then floated to their final position where they are sunk to the seabed. Fixed platforms are economically feasible for installation in water depths up to about 1,700 feet (520 m).
Compliant Towers, consist of narrow, flexible towers and a piled foundation supporting a conventional deck for drilling and production operations. Compliant towers are designed to sustain significant lateral deflections and forces, and are typically used in water depths ranging from 1,500 and 3,000 feet (450 and 900 m).
Semi-submersible Platforms having legs of sufficient buoyancy to cause the structure to float, but of weight sufficient to keep the structure upright. Semi-submersible rigs can be moved from place to place; and can be ballasted up or down by altering the amount of flooding in buoyancy tanks; they are generally anchored by cable anchors during drilling operations, though they can also be kept in place by the use of dynamic positioning. Semi-submersible can be used in depths from 600 to 6,000 feet (180 to 1,800 m).
Jack-up Platforms, as the name suggests, are platforms that can be jacked up above the sea, by dint of legs than can be lowered like jacks. These platforms, used in relatively low depths, are designed to move from place to place, and then anchor themselves by deploying the jack-like legs.
Drillships, a maritime vessel that has been fitted with drilling apparatus. It is most often used for exploratory drilling of new oil or gas wells in deep water but can also be used for scientific drilling. It is often built on a modified tanker hull and outfitted with a dynamic positioning system to maintain its position over the well.
Floating production systems are large ships equipped with processing facilities and moored to a location for a long period. The main types of floating production systems are FPSO (floating production, storage, and offloading system), FSO (floating storage and offloading system), and FSU (floating storage unit). These ships do not actually drill for oil or gas.
Tension-leg Platforms, consist of floating rigs tethered to the seabed in a manner that eliminates most vertical movement of the structure. TLPS are used in water depths up to about 6,000 feet (2,000 m). The "conventional" TLP is a 4-column design which looks similar to a semisubmersible. Proprietary versions include the Seastar and MOSES mini TLPs; they are relatively low cost, used in water depths between 600 and 3,500 feet (200 and 1,100 m). Mini TLPs can also be used as utility, satellite or early production platforms for larger deepwater discoveries.

A Statfjord Gravity Base Structure under construction in Norway

Spar Platforms, moored to the seabed like the TLP, but whereas the TLP has vertical tension tethers the Spar has more conventional mooring lines. Spars have been designed in three configurations: the "conventional" one-piece cylindrical hull, the "truss spar" where the midsection is composed of truss elements connecting the upper buoyant hull (called a hard tank) with the bottom soft tank containing permanent ballast, and the "cell spar" which is built from multiple vertical cylinders. The Spar may be more economical to build for small and medium sized rigs than the TLP, and has more inherent stability than a TLP since it has a large counterweight at the bottom and does not depend on the mooring to hold it upright. It also has the ability, by use of chain-jacks attached to the mooring lines, to move horizontally over the oil field. The first Spar was Kerr-McGee's Neptune, which is a floating production facility anchored in 1,930 feet (588 m) in the Gulf of Mexico. Dominion Oil's Devil's Tower is located in 5,610 feet (1,710 m) of water, in the Gulf of Mexico, and is the world's deepest spar. The first (and only) cell spar is Kerr-McGee's Red Hawk.

[edit] Maintenance and supply

A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water desalinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a Floating Storage Unit and/or tanker loading facility. Elements in the oil/gas production process include wellhead, production manifold, production separator, glycol process to dry gas, gas compressors, water injection pumps, oil/gas export metering and main oil line pumps. All production facilities are designed to have minimal environmental impact.

Larger platforms are assisted by smaller ESVs (emergency support vessels) like the British Iolair that are summoned when something has gone wrong, e.g. when a search and rescue operation is required. During normal operations, PSVs (platform supply vessels) keep the platforms provisioned and supplied, and AHTS vessels can also supply them, as well as tow them to location and serve as standby rescue and firefighting vessels.

[edit] Risks

A typical offshore Oil/Gas platform

The nature of their operation — extraction of volatile substances sometimes under extreme pressure in a hostile environment — has risk and frequent accidents and tragedies occur. In July 1988, 167 people died when Occidental Petroleum's Alpha offshore production platform, on the Piper field in the North Sea, exploded after a gas leak. The accident greatly accelerated the practice of housing living accommodation on self-contained separate rigs, away from those used for extraction.

However, this was, in itself, a hazardous environment. In March 1980, the 'flotel' (floating hotel) platform Alexander Kielland capsized in a storm in the North Sea with the loss of 123 lives.

Given the number of grievances and conspiracy theories that involve the oil business, and the importance of gas/oil platforms to the economy, they are in the United States seen as potential terrorist targets. Agencies and military units responsible for maritime counterterror in the US (Coast Guard, Navy SEALs, etc.) often train for platform raids.

[edit] Environmental effects

In British waters, the cost of removing all platform rig structures entirely was estimated in 1995 at £1.5 billion, and the cost of removing all structures including pipelines — a so-called "clean sea" approach — at £3 billion.

Further effects are the leaching of heavy metals that accumulate in buoyancy tanks into water; and risks associated with their disposal. There has been concern expressed at the practice of partially demolishing offshore rigs to the point that ships can traverse across their site; there have been instances of fishery vessels snagging nets on the remaining structures. Proposals for the disposal at sea of the Brent Spar, a 137-metre (449 ft) tall storage buoy (another true function of that which is termed an oil rig), was for a time in 1996 an environmental cause célèbre in the UK after Greenpeace occupied the floating structure. The event led to a reconsideration of disposal policy in the UK and Europe.

In the United States, Marine Biologist Milton Love has proposed that oil platforms off the California coast be retained as artificial reefs, instead of being dismantled (at great cost), because he has found them to be havens for many of the species of fish which are otherwise declining in the region, in the course of 11 years of research. Love is funded mainly by government agencies, but also in small part by the California Artificial Reef Enhancement Program. NOAA has said it is considering this course of action, but wants money to study the effects of the rigs in detail.

In the Gulf of Mexico, more than 200 platforms have been similarly converted.

[edit] Large platforms

The Petronius Platform is an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which stands 2,000 feet (610 metres) above the ocean floor. This structure is partially supported by buoyancy. Depending on the criteria it may be the world's tallest structure.

The Hibernia platform is an oil and gas platform in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. The GBS, which sits on the ocean floor, is 111 metres high and has storage capacity for 1.3 million barrels of crude oil in its 85 metre high caisson (Dorel Iosif). The platform acts as a small concrete island with serrated outer edges designed to withstand the impact of an iceberg. The GBS contains production storage tanks and the remainder of the void space is filled with ballast with the entire structure weighing in at 1.2 million tons. The platform stands 224 metres high, which is half the height of New York's Empire State Building (449 metres) and 33 metres taller than the Calgary Tower (191 metres).

[edit] History

The first oil platform in the world is the Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), built near Baku in Soviet Union. Building on the platform began in 1949, with Soviet Tankers transporting Oil from the first Well to Baku in 1951.The Oil Rocks lies 45–50 km (about 25 nautical miles) offshore on the Caspian Sea. The most unique feature of the Oil Rocks is that it is actually a functional city with a population of about 5000. The Oil Rocks is a city on the sea, with over 200 km of streets built on piles of dirt and landfill. Most of the inhabitants work on shifts; a week on Oil Rocks followed by a week on the shore.