The Sapinhoá and Lula North-East fields were developed through pilot systems composed of satellite wells connected to spread moored FPSOs. Each of these developments needed to connect up to 45 lines coming from the wells to a single balcony at FPSO portside, not including gas export riser and its ESDV umbilical. It was expected variable levels of CO 2 and H 2 S, posing the challenge to find a suitable solution that endure the 27 years life of the fields in 2140m water depth in the harsher Santos Basin. To cope with these challenges, Petrobras and partners (BG E&P Brazil and Repsol Sinopec Brazil, in Sapinhoá field, BG E&P Brazil and Petrogral Brazil, in Lula Field) decided to pursue a decoupled risers' system solution and launch a "design competition process" which ended up selecting the Buoy Supporting Risers (BSR) concept solution developed by Subsea 7. This paper describes the BSR System and the needed careful physical and numerical modelling and massive analysis of a largely complex new system, backed up by prototype tank testing, all of them tackled to capture the in-place behaviour to generate the design input envelopes for all system components.

The novel ‘Gimbal Joint Riser’ (GJR) device is an invention that allows for a free-hanging riser catenary configuration by providing the functionality of adding a ‘hinge’ or articulation in midway of the riser column. Such mid-length articulation allows that dynamic bending and compression at touchdown zone (TDZ) be reduced enough to get within acceptable design limits, what is not achievable with a traditional steel catenary riser (SCR) connected to a spread-moored FPSO in ultra-deep-water scenarios like Santos Basin in Brazil. The aim of the invention is to offer an economic competitive option to current state-of-the-art solution of applying Steel Lazy Wave Risers (SLWR), by eliminating the need of relatively expensive buoyancy modules. The objective of this paper is to present this new concept and simulations results.