The Terra Nova project is the first subsea development on the Grand Banks area off the east coast of Canada. The area presents a unique set of challenges such as harsh environmental conditions, risk of damage from icebergs and little established infrastructure. To meet these challenges, an alliance approach was established, creating an ideal environment for an integrated team which produced extremely valuable results through optimization across the areas of FPSO, subsea and subsurface. Concurrent with Design Basis development, field development activities were commenced. This included determination of bottom hole location of the wells, seabed facilities including positions and types of manifolds/templates, flowline choice and protection of seabed facilities to minimize risk from iceberg scour.

The Terra Nova field is the second largest oil field discovered to date in the Jeanne d'Arc basin on the Grand Banks, with recoverable reserves of approximately 370 million barrels. The field, located in approximately 94 m of water 350 km East-Southeast of St John's, Newfoundland and 35 km Southeast of the Hibernia field, will be developed utilising subsea flowlines from four drill centres tied back to an FPSO. This paper discusses the design approaches adopted to meet the principal flow assurance challenges for the subsea facilities. These are:Hydrate formation: the minimum seabed ambient temperature is -2 °C.(ii) Wax formation: the design is based on stabilised crude having a wax content of 9.0 %, a pour point of 12 °C and a wax appearance temperature of 46 °C. The wax dissolution temperature is 70 °C.(iii) The implications of turret disconnection: the buoy along with all the risers can be released to allow the FPSO to move off-station to avoid icebergs.