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Offshore Technology Conference
May 3–6, 2004
Houston, Texas
All Days
ISBN: 978-1-55563-251-9
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Design and Installation of the Valhall Piggyback Structures
Torstein Alm; Richard O. Snell; Kevin M. Hampson; Arne Olaussen
Paper presented at the Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, Texas, May 2004.
Paper Number: OTC-16294-MS
https://doi.org/10.4043/16294-MS
Published: May 03 2004
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Abstract
This paper describes the design development and installation of a novel concept
used to repair the piles at Valhall Water Injection Platform in the Southern
Norwegian Sector of the North Sea. The paper describes the concept, design
principles, the tolerances required to account for known and potential dimensional
variations, a test programme to verify key activities and the installation.

Introduction
The Valhall Water Injection Platform jacket is a 4000 tonne steel substructure,
designed to support a 16000 tonne integrated deck, situated in the North Sea in 70
meters depth of water. The platform is located in close proximity to other existing
Valhall structures for drilling and topsides tie in. During the installation of the
jacket in August 2002, five of the eight skirt piles experienced premature refusal
in a very dense sand layer at a penetration varying between approximately 45 and 55
meters. The target penetration for these piles was 67 and 72 meters. The 67 meter
target penetration was reached for the remaining three piles without abnormal
behaviour.

For the refused piles, two located in two corners oppose to each other, and one in
third corner, proper connection to the jacket could not be made, as there were no
pile weld beads on the piles to match with the pile sleeves. In addition, since the
piles had variable wall thickness make up along depths the piles bending properties
in some depths were now inadequate, in particular at the mudline elevation.
Finally, due to the shorter pile penetration, the pile capacities were insufficient
to support the design loads, in particular on the tension side of the jacket.

A jack-up rig was chartered complete with a top-hole full-bore airlift drilling
system and a geotechnical drilling system. This spread of equipment was mobilised
to remove the soil column within the piles and also enable geotechnical boreholes
to be drilled both inside and adjacent to the piles. Rather than piles which had
plugged during driving, the investigation revealed that the toe of both the refused
piles at one corner had collapsed inwards, leaving the toe almost closed.

As soon as the severity of pile damage had been revealed, the possibility for
further driving was soon ruled out as an option for foundation remediation,
together with a number of other remedial solutions, which would utilise the jack-up
rig. As a consequence, the jack-up rig was then demobilised. Various possibilities
for saving the foundation were investigated. The criticality of jacket location
relative to the existing facilities constrained options to either repair or to
remove and replace. Remove and replace was unattractive due to high cost and
lengthy delay to the schedule.

The finally chosen option was based on a BP concept to repair using two remediation
structures, each to be connected to the two refused piles at two corners. A new
pile sleeve was added to this structure, allowing additional piles to be driven.
These structures, named piggyback structures, were connected to the existing piles
sleeves and piles already driven, by grouting, see figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1 Computer model of the lower part of jacket with Piggybacks(Available in

full paper)

Keywords:installation, offshore campaign, grouted joint, otc 16294, elevation,

piggyback insert, grout, force distribution, lower insert, upstream oil & gas
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