10000 – Geosciences Committee
10001 - Geophysical Characterization and Monitoring from Abandoned
Appraisal Wells - Phase II $500,000
This CTR extends CTR9701 towards gathering downhole seismic data in abandoned appraisal wells. That is, to devise, and if possible demonstrate, a system to permanently equip appraisal wells, prior to abandonment, with seismic sensors and data transmission equipment to allow active and/or passive seismic experiments for characterization and monitoring both prior to development and during production.
10100 – Regulatory Committee
10200 – Flow Assurance Committee
10201-1 – Asphaltene Deposition $200,000
This asphaltene modeling tool will enable Asphaltne deposition risk quantification resulting in completion savings where deposition management needs may be acceptably low.
10201-2 – Asphaltene Deposition $300,000
This lab testing tools will enable Asphaltne deposition risk quantification resulting in completion savings where deposition management needs may be acceptably low.
10202 – Hydrate Transportabilit $430,000
Extending operation of wells without major facility expenditures and being able to operate wells safely within hydrate forming conditions within the production system will provide Operators with significant value.
10203 - Wax Predication Confidence and Pigging Risk $300,000
Currently there are several approaches for wax deposition predictions. The result from these approaches may vary in orders of magnitude in calculated wax deposition rate and estimated pigging intervals. As an example, a recent study within a joint venture showed that depending on which approach we take, we can predict pigging interval of 8 hrs, 3-6 weeks or one year. There is a need to collect field data from different operators and analyze the data to benchmark these approaches. It could be that overly conservative CAPEX (insulation) and OPEX (chemical) decisions that are currently being made based on these inconsistent predictions. Within individual operating companies, limited data are available from the field (such as pig returns, pressure drop and decline in flow rate) to accurately benchmark any of these approaches. There is a need to have a collection of field data from major operators to make this benchmarking exercise successful. There is also a need to survey operational experience (both success and failure) with regard to different pig designs for wax removal and evaluate risk of stuck pig with different pig designs.
10204 - Hydrate Comprehensive Dissociation Model $250,000
The inhibitor dissociation model will help industry engineers predict the time to dissociate a hydrate plug. They will be able to optimize the use of inhibitors, leading to reduced operating expenditures for inhibitors and their recovery.
10205 - Controlled Hydrate Multiphase Transport $300,000
The project’s objective is to investigate and develop processes, methods or techniques that will allow hydrates transport in slurry, in both horizontal and vertical configurations, with a defined level of control (adjust within a certain range the solid content, water conversion, rheology…). Providing such a lever will be a key step in making slurry flow an acceptable and viable production option.
The emphasis in the current proposal is on a chemical control of the slurry, while taking advantage of emerging process options (subsea gas-liquid separation, subsea liquid-liquid separation…)
10300 – Subsea Systems Committee
10301 – Alternatives to In-Line Inspection for Pipeline Integrity $400,000
Management, Phase 2
The primary driver for ILI inspection is to reduce the risk of an environmental release of oil/gas and the attendant loss of reputation. No other risks justify the substantial effort and investment required to enable and implement ILI in an offshore environment. In the near future, Integrity Management may be a US regulatory requirement. Alternatives to ILI to propose to regulators might prevent imposition of ILI as the only tool. Consequently alternatives must deliver a high probability of preventing an accidental release to the environment.
10302 – Distribution of Inhibitors on the Sea-Floor@10,000 ft $250,000
For distribution of chemicals to subsea injection points. Pump would be electrically controlled by the control system to manage injection. May be used for tree or processing chemical or inhibitor needs. The value is elimination of the hydraulic umbical that is currently required to operate a subsea well.
10303 – Reducing the number of Hydraulic Lines for Intelligent Subsea Wells $250,000
Reduce the number of hydraulic control lines to subsea intelligent wells by developing a subsea control system capable of pressuring multiplexed downhole control lines in the appropriate control sequences.
10304 – All Electric Subsea Autonomous HIPPS Architecture $250,000
The proposed work is to study the architecture of all subsea autonomous electrical HIPPS. Define the functional specifications, architecture; identify the technology gaps and the work program for the technology development.
Further lowering the cost of development and improving the economics for the marginal discovered accumulations is the primary objective of this work.
10305 – MIT Video Over Acoustic Link $200,000
Over the past few years researchers in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory at MIT have developed communication algorithms that make use of state-of-the-art modulation and demodulation techniques to maximize the performance over the underwater acoustic channel. This project will demonstrate acoustic video communication in a mobile dynamic environment.
10400 – Floating Systems Committee
10401 – Riser/Tendon: VIV Suppression, Safety Factors, $450,000
Monitoring & Simulations
This project extends work conducted under Ph 8 & 9 on riser modeling and VIV. It consists of four independent elements to be conducted in parallel. The work addresses modeling and interpretation of partially-straked risers, factors of safety estimation, low cost monitoring systems and advanced modeling (CFD) output. The need for and the performance of VIV suppression systems will result from this work. More efficient and better VIV management performance is expected to result.
10402 – Effect of Coupled Horizontal and Vertical Interaction of
Steel Catenary Risers with the Seabed within the Touchdown Region $48,000
The current standard practice for the fatigue life analysis of SCRs may be unconservative because it only considers the vertical interaction of the SCR with the soil in the touchdown region. This work investigates the effect of coupled vertical and horizontal interaction with the soil in the touchdown region and analyzes the effect on SCR fatigue life.
10403 – Floating Systems Integrity Management Requirements and $30,000
Monitoring / Inspection Technologies Workshop
Many of the recent floating installations have some degree of monitoring and have integrity management plans in place. The integrity management plans quite often rely mostly on visual inspection of moorings and risers, which has its limitations. There are technologies available and some in early development stages that improve greatly on visual inspections. Monitoring motions, stresses/strains, etc have been applied on some projects but the experiences with these systems has not been widely distributed. The purpose of the workshop is to allow sharing of company’s experiences and best practices, share ongoing developments in the area of IM, monitoring and inspection and allow discussions on what an integrity management plan should include and deliver.
10404 – Generic Dry Tree Semi Development $333,000
Demonstrate the commercial and technical feasibility of more traditional size semisubmersibles as permanent hulls supporting dry tree wells. The work is to demonstrate the feasibility and identify further work or gaps that are outstanding before the concept is considered field ready.
10405 – Application of Seabed-Riser Interaction to Steel $40,000
Catenary Riser (SCR) Design
The project is to study the riser responses using the new nonlinear soil model and to compare the sensitivity effects of different soil parameters on the global behavior of the SCR systems.
10500 – Drilling and Completion Committee
10501 – Develop highly reliable & high power ESPs – Phase I $250,000
(note - increased to cover scope of 10300-C)
Conduct a gap study to identify the barriers that prevents a subsea down hole ESP from providing a 95% confidence that a 5 year run life can be obtained. From the gap study identify specific projects that need to be conducted to close the “gap”.
10502 – Dual Gradient Drilling Flow Stop Valve, Phase I $75,000
1. Investigate the current state of development of FSVs - Flow Stop Valves.
2. Provide suggestions for any changes that might be considered to the functional design requirements in the future to expand the capability or reliability of future equipment.
3. Provide suggestions on future test requirements for FSVs to provide sufficient confidence in the operational capabilities of the equipment under all anticipated load conditions.
4. Provide possible design approaches that might be explored as alternatives to the current designs.
5. Assess the potential of each supplier to provide a viable product to the market within the next two years that has long term reliability and meets the FSV functional requirements.
10700 – Reservoir Engineering Committee
10701 – Appraisal Technology Gap & Concept Generation $250,000
This work will develop an understanding of why forecasts of rates and recoveries at the time of sanction have been inconsistent and generally been poor, determine the technology gaps that cause the poor predictions, and identify potential concepts to close these gaps.
10702 – Remote Reservoir Pressure Monitoring in Abandoned $300,000
Appraisal Wells - Phase 3
This CTR extends CTR9701 into Phase 3 of development. This CTR will support the tool fabrication and the testing in an onshore well. This work will be accompanied with the appropriate level of communications with and endorsements from the MMS. Inclusive in this CTR is a contractor independent of the tool service company to act as a liaison between the service company and the Reservoir Committee.
10703 – Waterflooding Look back $250,000
Perform a look back study of the fields in deepwater GOM with water injection history. Utilizing available production data and reported field history, compile this information in a form of lessons learned and develop the understanding of the key production performance drivers. Derived the key components to success and/or failures for each fields. Estimate the incremental recovery due to injection. Look for trends and correlating/dependent parameters.
10800 – Met-Ocean Committee
10801 – Wind $150,000
Project will examine wind measurements made in severe Gulf of Mexico hurricanes by industry and government/academic agencies over the period 2004-2008, with the intent of benchmarking current industry design wind formulas as specified in API RP2A-WSD.
10802 – Current Hind Cast $200,000
Over the past four years, DeepStar has funded two projects that focused on measuring and modeling of Topographic Rossby Waves (TRW). These projects have been extremely successful and resulted in a validated model at Florida State University, thus signaling the successful completion of the "development" phase of research. We now want to enter the "deployment phase" by using the model to generate a 50-year hindcast database that will serve as the basis for much improved TRW design and operating criteria near the Escarpment. In addition, recent research shows that fairly strong near-bottom currents can be found in the deepwater region north of the Escarpment (Green Canyon, Walker Ridge) where tides and regular Rossby waves can be amplified by the numerous salt domes. We need to include this region and these processes for the TRW database so we will in essence be generating a database that will be useful for a much larger region than just the Escarpment.
10803 – Analysis of Deepwater Currents $250,000
Over the last 6 years the Industry has taken the equivalent of roughly 200 years of measurements as mandated by the MMS-NTL. While NDBC has been QA/QC’ing and archiving the measurements, close inspection shows that many measurements, especially near-bottom, are missing and some of the measurements, especially near-surface, contain systemic errors.
With these points in mind, the objective of this project would be to a) retrieve all the measurements taken under the auspices of the MMS NTL, b) do a thorough clean-up of the data and archive it in a deliverable database, c) screen the measurements to identify energetic events and document those events for future study, and d) use the measurements to refine the present conceptual model of the north-central Gulf circulation.
10900 – Systems Engineering Committee
10901 – EPS Gas Offloading Development with Regulator Involvement $560,000
An initial Framing study was completed for an Early Production System (EPS) for the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). The proposed EPS arrangement consisted of a DP FPSO with a quick connect and disconnect capability at the base of a bundled riser system. The focus of the study was to develop details of the arrangement and establish first order cost estimate for the system.
Additional studies were completed to further define the EPS components and develop detailed specifications for each of the major systems, ie Subsea system, riser and riser handling system, gas handling system, FPSO operations etc. In addition a further TRL assessment was completed on each component along with developing the final deliverable; a business case analysis indicated that the EPS still remains a viable option for the GOM.
This work is an extension to the initial CTRs 8901-2 and 9902, and will focus on the CNG gas handling issues.
10902 – Jules Verne Subsea Processing Project Conceptual (Pre-Feed) Study $300,000
Perform a conceptual field development study to identify outstanding technology gaps in the facilities, and operation of a subsea processing system to develop a ultra-deepwater field
