Snohvit Lessons Learned

30 April 2009 London Evening Meeting

Chairman Phil Hawthorn, J P Kenny
Sponsored by Vecto Gray

Report by J Sanchez Monge, Cranfield University MSc Student

Flyer

Presentations

Snohvit Lessons Learned

Stuart Holley, Lead Software Engineer, Vecto Gray

The subsea industry has seen increasing interest in recent years in subsea-to-beach tiebacks for subsea production systems mainly associated with LNG developments. Ultra-long tie-back of subsea fields raises particular challenges in respect to both flow assurance and long-offset subsea production control systems.

This evening session went into detail on the challenges associated with control systems, using the Snohvit field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea as a benchmark development. For the production control system, the Snohvit field represents an industry 'first' as a long offshet tie-back to the beach over some 144km, designed to facilitate an extension for some additional wells and onshore routing of the control cables, such that the design requirement has been a 200km tie-back.

Stuart Holley was VectoGray's lead software engineer on Snohvit from project execution through to installation and commissioning. The presentation addressed issues encountered throughout the realisation of the Snohvit subsea system and some of the key lessons learned.