Australian oil and gas operators are in the planning stages for a number of floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSO) to be deployed in fields across the nation, including the Barossa, Browse, Dorado and Buffalo developments. The planned FPSOs and future oil and gas field developments will require a fleet of technologies and equipment to inspect and maintain assets to ensure environmental compliance and operational processes.
In June last year, Woodside announced it had approved its basis of design (BoD) of all elements of the Browse development in Western Australia, including the FPSO facility. The concept includes two identical FPSOs which would process and export dry gas to the existing infrastructure at the Karratha Gas Plant via the Browse Trunkline and NWS’s second trunkline. David Thain, operations readiness manager, said the BoD is designed for the entire 30 year-lifespan of the Browse development. “We have made sure we use modern technologies and have enabled technologies we think will be coming through in the future,” Mr Thain said. “For instance, we’ve enabled areas for drones, robots and subsea autonomous vehicles to dock, power up and transfer the data they collect when they undertake tasks.”
While Woodside’s final investment decision has been deferred for Browse, the company has said that when the timing is right, they will be ready to proceed. In May this year, Carnarvon Petroleum Limited made great progress with the Dorado field development in relation to the planned FPSO vessel. Pre-front end engineering design contracts have been awarded to three contractors who will work independently to advance their FPSO designs.
Carnarvon is also progressing with its Buffalo development following the signing of the Maritime Boundary Treaty last year by the Australian and Timor-Leste governments. A team has undertaken field surveillance operations in the area of the oil field to determine the potential future locations for assets such as wells, platform and flowline. Carnarvon has indicated that the Buffalo field development will consist of a wellhead platform connected to an FPSO vessel through a production pipeline and control umbilicals.
With the growing number of planned FPSOs to be deployed in Australian waters, inspections of these major assets are also becoming increasingly more important. Remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) are crucial for oil and gas operators to keep their subsea assets in check. ROVs are currently being used as part of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas hull inspections and at Woodside, ROVs have enabled experts to view subsea video feed in real-time, allowing them to immediately assess issues and accelerate decision-making.
Development in the ROV space is ongoing, and while robotisation in the oil industry is nothing new, some technologies are still in their infancy. In Norway, Equinor has progressed further than many other operators and has a range of offshore robots in its fleet. Its empowered remotely operated vehicle (E-ROV), for example, operates remotely via a fast Ethernet connection from a control room anywhere in the world. To improve connectivity, Equinor has installed a 4G network which allows the control signals and video from the E-ROV to be transmitted via a buoy on the surface. Due to its on-board battery and subsea charging station, the E-ROV is also self-sufficient with energy. This gives considerable cost savings, environmental advantages, and the ability to respond in time-critical operations such as valve operations, startup activities, and monitoring.
Another of Equinor’s robots is designed to live permanently underwater and carry out tasks that would normally require the use of a remote-controlled robot from the surface. The snake-like robot has self-propelled robotic arms and can transit over long distances and carry out operations in confined spaces not accessible by conventional underwater vehicles. ROVs depend on reliable connectivity to a human pilot somewhere in the world who can step in when automation fails, however the increasing level of maturity of automated vessel technology could offer many benefits for operators.
Equinor’s free-swimming autonomous underwater vehicle is used to map the seabed prior to development of major oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. So far, the robot has mapped more than 120,000 km of seabed, down to a depth of 4,500 metres. While Equinor’s vehicle was developed already in the 1980s, autonomous underwater vehicle technology is becoming even more progressive. The ROVs themselves are becoming increasingly smarter, but it is also the advancements in software which allow operators to push the limits of how and where ROVs can travel, what data can be captured and how the information is displayed, analysed and actioned.
