Offshore production facilities

The function of offshore production facilities are very much the same as those described for land operations. An offshore production platform is rather like a gathering station hydrocarbons have to be collected, processed and evacuated for further treatment or storage. However, the design and layout of the offshore facilities are very different from those on land for the following reasons  

This section describes the main types of offshore production platform and satellite development facilities, as well as associated evacuation systems. 

Platforms are generally classified by their mechanical construction. There are four main types  

Floating production systems offer production facilities offshore, and will be introduced in this section. 

Artificial islands could be regarded as platforms but fall somewhere between land and offshore facilities. 

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This approach has been performed on. several offshore production facilities with inconsistent results. That is, items that were identified by one set of evaluators as required for protection in one design were not required by another set of evaluators in a completely similar design. In addition, potential failure of some safety devices on one facility caused evaluators to require additional safety devices as back-up, while the same group in evaluating a similar installation that did not have the initial safety devices at all did not identify the absence of the primary safety device as a hazard or require back-up safety devices. 

Sometimes it is easiest to prepare a general flowchart that identifies events which may occur at a facility during an incident. This flowchart can identify possible avenues the event may lead to and the protection measures available to mitigate and protect the facility. It will also highlight deficiencies. The use of a flowchart helps the understanding of events by personal unfamiliar with petroleum risk and safety measures. It portrays a step by step scenarios that is easy to follow or explain. Preparation of in-depth risk probability analysis can also use the flowchart as the basis of the event trees or failure modes and effects. Figure 3 provides a generic example of a typical hydrocarbon process facility Safety Flowchart. API Recommended Practice RP 14C provides an example of a Safety Flowchart for an offshore production facility. 

American Petroleum Institute (API), RP-14J. Design and Hazards Analysis for Offshore Production Facilities. First Edition, API, Washington, D.C., 1993. 

RP 14J—Design and Hazards Analysis for Offshore Production Facilities. 

API RP 75 was written in response to the need for a SEMP. The API also produced a companion document, RP 14J, for identifying safety hazards on offshore production facilities. In 1994, the MMS published a Notice in the Federal Register that recognized implementation of RP 75 as meeting the spirit and intent of SEMP. RP 75 was updated in July 1998 to focus more on contract operations, including operations on mobile offshore drilling units. 

Managing production losses on an offshore production facility is a continuous improvement process that deals... 

It has been estimated that more than 4,000 offshore production facilities exist on the outer continental shelf (OCS). These exploration wells can be drilled to depths of around 10,000 feet. Most production systems are designed to operate at depths of 6,000 feet. Oil and gas product pipeline networks extend well off the continental slope. Offshore production rigs and drilling and production platforms can be classified as onshore platforms, fixed platforms, jackup rigs, semisubmersibles, drill ships, and tension-leg platforms. 

This standard brings together in one place a brief description of basic hazards analysis procedures for offshore production facilities. This recommended practice discusses several procedures that could be used to perform a hazards analysis and it presents minimum requirements for process safety information and hazards analysis that can be used for satisfying the requirements of API RP 75. 

Markeset, T. 2008. Design for High Performance Assurance for Offshore Production Facilities in Remote Harsh and Sensitive Environments. OPSEARCH, 45,275. 

Natural gas is saturated with water as it leaves the well, which has to be removed from the stream. Along with the operating problems of having liquid water in the high-pressure transmission system, there is a problem of the potential formation of methane hydrates. This solid material can form from the interaction of free water with methane under the normal operating temperature and pressure in the pipeline (a typical pressure of 70 bar and temperatures of below 13°C). Offshore production facilities require very expensive sub-sea lines to carry gas to on-shore terminal. As a result it is desirable to perform as much gas treatment as possible at the wellhead. This would both increase the... 

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