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RISERS AND MOORING SYSTEMS

(NAOE-4211)

Course Teacher
Dr. N. M. Golam Zakaria
Professor
Dept. of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering
BUET, Dhaka-1000

 This course will provide students with deeper understanding in the

mooring and deep-water risers systems in offshore oil and gas
production.

 Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this unit, students

should be able to:

• explain the static, quasi-static, and dynamic mooring and riser

analyses.
• describe and apply theories and concepts for designing subsea
pipelines, riser and mooring system of marine vehicles and floating
structures.

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Station keeping systems; Permanent and mobile mooring systems; Mooring

configurations: single-leg mooring, spread mooring, turret mooring; Mooring
components: wire ropes, synthetic fibre ropes, chains, clump weights, drag
and suction anchors, piles; winches and windlass; Single-component and
multi-component catenary equations; Soil-mooring interaction; Mooring
failure modes; Static, quasi-static, and dynamic mooring analysis; Mooring
design criteria and considerations;. Deep-water risers and umbilical; Flow
assurance and system design; Introduction to design of subsea pipelines and
risers, Riser components, Riser failure modes; Structural riser analysis; Static
and dynamic riser analyses; Riser design criteria and considerations.

1) Mooring System Engineering for Offshore Structures

by Kai-Tung Ma, Yong Luo, Thomas Kwan and
Yongyan Wu. Published by Gulf Professional
Publishing

2) Hand Book of Offshore Engineering by SUBRATA K.

CHAKRABARTI, Volume II, Published by Elsevier
Ltd.,2005

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• Exploratory drilling for oil and gas

• Preparing water or gas for injection into the reservoir

• Processing oil and gas

• Cleaning the produced water for disposal into the sea

• Accommodation for people work over there with all facilities

• Harnessing wave power for renewable energy, offshore base

for naval applications, offshore airport etc.

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Summerland California Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela Caspean Sea, Soviat Era

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 First Oil well was drilled in 1891 at Grand Lake, St. Mary’s Ohio State

 1896: First submerged oil wells in salt water were drilled in Summerland field
in California

 1900: Early submerged drilling activities occurred on Canadian side of Lake

Erie

 1910: Caddo Lake in Lousiana

 1920: Drilling started from Concrete platforms in Lake Maracaibo , Venezuela

 1930: Texas Company developed its first mobile steel barges for drilling

 1937: Chevron Corporation (previously Pure Oil Company) and Exxon Mobil
(previously Superior oil company) used fixed platform to develop in 4.2m
water depth at one mile offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Lousiana

 1946: Mangolia Petroleum Company (now part of Exxon Mobil) erected a

drilling platform in 5.4m water depth, 18 miles off the coast of St. Mary Parish,
Lousiana

 First offshore platform was installed in 1947 off the coast of Louisiana in 6m
depth by Superior Oil Company

 1947: Kerr-McGee Oil Industries (now Anadarko Petroleum Corporation), Phillips

Petroleum (Conoco Philips) and Stanolind Oil & Gas (BP) that completed their
historic Ship Shoal Block 32 well in October 1947

 Exploration started/moved to deeper water

 From 1955-Jack up rig

 Between 1955~1988, Jacket platform becomes Popular and used

 After 1988-Engineers moves floating structure to explore oil and gas in deeper
and deeper water.

 New types structures like Tension Leg Platform, Articulated Tower, Semi-
submergible etc.

 1984-Hutton TLP in North Sea

Primary driving force to move from shallow water to deep water was
exploration of oil and gas to meet energy demand.

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 There are more that 6500 offshore oil and

gas installation spread in 53 countries around
the world.
 Constructed offshore structure so far:
Location No. of Platforms
USA (Gulf of Mexico) 4,000
Europe, North Sea and 470
North East Atlantic
West Africa Coast 380
Middle East 700
Asia 950

Offshore structures are unique in many

respects:
 Install at a site where no access to mainland
(stand-alone)
 Hostile environment, require to stay in all
weather condition
 Cost is increasingly high
 Technological complexity is high
 Research and Development (R & D) is very
limited and restricted

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 Depth of water keep on changing:

 In seventies
> 80 m was considered as deep water
 Early Nineties
>300 m was considered as deep water
 In the recent past
- deep water: >500 m
-Ultra deep water: > 1500 m
-Super deep water: > 2500 m

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 The ocean provides valuable natural resources, such as crude oil

and natural gas under the seabed
 Over the past decades, there has been a steady rise in the
demand for floating structures such as FPSOs (floating
production storage and offloading), semisubmersibles, spars,
and TLPs (tension-leg platform) for for exploration or production
 A key element for these floating platforms is the mooring system,
which 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.

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 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.
 Offshore moorings have a relatively short history compared to, for instance,
traditional ship related moorings.
 Technologies in mooring and station-keeping have improved significantly
for deeper water.
 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.
 Early DP systems were not very reliable where 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

 Offshore drilling operations are conducted by MODUs(Mobile

Offshore Drilling Unit), which can be categorized into at least
four types: jack-up barge, drilling semi, drillship, and tender-
assisted-drilling (TAD) vessel.
 Jack-up barges use their vertical legs to stand on the seabed and
raise their hulls above the sea surface, so they may not be
considered as one of the vessel types for floating drilling.
 The other three types use either a mooring system, a DP
system, or a thruster assisted mooring system to provide
station-keeping for floating drilling.
 The operation to drill an exploratory well is normally of short
duration, lasting 30-90 days.
 There is a need for the vessel to move periodically from one well
site to another. The frequent moves require the mooring system
to be designed for easy retrieval and redeployment. The
relocation of MODUs is typically done by towing, unless the
vessel is equipped with a DP system that allows self-propelling.

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 Most floating drilling vessels are of semisubmersible types

which are designed with good stability and seakeeping
characteristics.
 A semisubmersible retains most of its buoyancy from ballasted,
watertight pontoons located below the ocean surface and wave
action.
 Vertical columns connect the pontoons and operations deck.
With its hull structure submerged at a deep draft, the
semisubmersible is less affected by wave loadings than a
drillship. With a small water-plane area, the semisubmersible is
sensitive to load changes, and therefore must be carefully
designed to maintain stability.
 The drilling operation is conducted through a drilling riser,
which is connected to a BOP (Blowout Preventer) for well control.
The drilling riser can have an angle mainly due to the horizontal
offset of the floating vessel, and the angle must be controlled to
stay within a limit. The function of the mooring system is to
ensure that the vessel is kept within these offset limits

Drilling Semi contd..

 In recent years, drilling semis used in deep water (say, 2000-8000

ft.) and ultradeep water (say, 8000 ft. and deeper) have become
very large, and some of them are equipped with highly-advanced
DP systems. However, most of them still have a mooring system
available onboard. The mooring system allows the semis to drill in
shallow water areas, where DP systems may not be able to
maintain the riser angle within an allowable limit

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 Drillships, which can be spread moored or dynamically positioned, have a

long history of being used in floating drilling operations.
 Because of the relatively poor motion characteristics of a ship-shaped
vessel, moored drillships are seldom used today.
 In recent years, drillships used in deep water and ultradeep water have
become very large, and have no mooring system.
 They are equipped with highly-advanced DP systems instead. These DP
systems maintain the position of a drillship within a small specified
tolerance by controlling their thrusters to counter the wind, wave, and
current forces.
 Without a mooring system, drillships may not be able to service shallow
water areas due to the angle limit on drilling risers.

 The TAD concept is used to reduce the requirements on deck space

and dead weight for a fixed platform, TLP, semi, or spar. It allows
reductions in deck- load and space requirements since the drilling
package is not permanently installed on the production platform.
 A TAD vessel brings a drilling package together with the
consumables such as drilling fluid (mud). The vessel is moored
alongside the production platform to provide the equipment and
support
 Early tenders were barge shaped. Semisubmersible hulls are used
more now because they offer better station-keeping and vessel
motions compared with barge-shaped hulls. TADs are seeing new
uses on deepwater floating production platforms, such as spars and
TLPs. In addition to supporting drilling and completion operations,
tenders can also provide living quarters for the offshore operation
personnel.

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The design of the tender mooring requires special attention because of the
close proximity between the tender and the host platform. An asymmetric
mooring pattern may have to be used to avoid mooring lines clashing with the
host platform, and the vessel offsets need to be carefully controlled to avoid
exceeding the limits of the connections between the two platforms such as
gangway bridges, mud hoses, and hawser lines.

 Fixed platforms were initially used to produce oil and gas in water depth up to
about 1200 ft. The concept of compliant tower was developed for production in
water depths beyond 1200 ft. However, the water depth capability of compliant
tower is still limited to about 1800 ft.
 As exploration moved to deeper waters, floating production systems were
deployed. Mooring systems are used to keep floating production platforms on
station.
 There are several types of floating production platforms, including TLP, semi,
spar, FPSO, and offloading buoy.

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 The first mooring standard, Recommended Practice 2P (API RP 2P), was

published in 1984 by the American Petroleum Institute (API). It was
developed to address design and analysis of spread mooring systems for
floating drilling platforms. Around the same time, the industry began to
use floating production platforms for oil production instead of the
conventional fixed jackets, depending on water depth.
 API RP 2FP1 was published in 1987 to address the stricter requirements
needed in the mooring design for floating 6 Mooring System
Engineering for Offshore Structures production platforms.
 Later, the first edition of API RP 2SK was published in 1995 to combine
API RP 2P and API RP 2FP1 into one document, which also provided
additional guidance based on the technological advancement at the time.
The publishing of RP 2SK was a milestone in codes and standards for
offshore mooring.

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 The third edition of API RP 2SK was published in 2005 with a significant
improvement over the previous editions. It provided guidance for the first time
on several important issues such as mooring hardware requirements, chain
corrosion allowance, clearance criteria, anchor design and installation, design
for vortex-induced motions, global performance analysis guidelines, and
MODU mooring criteria for GOM hurricane season. (ISO).
 There were several other mooring standards developed by class societies, such
as the American Bureau of Shipping, Det Norske Veritas, and Bureau Veritas.
 To a certain degree, the multiple standards caused some confusion for
designers, as they could have different requirements on safety factors,
metocean criteria, or corrosion allowance.
 To resolve the issue of conflicting mooring standards, API and ISO initiated
an effort to develop unified standards.- As part of this effort, a panel was
created in 1995 to develop an ISO mooring standard, and the first edition of
ISO 19901-7 was published in 2005 as the result. ISO later published the
second edition in 2013.

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