Reeling and J-Lay Installation of SCR's on Roncador Field

Abstract

The paper describes activities and critical issues in relation to the preparations, qualifications, reeling and installation of two 10" Steel Catenary Risers (SCR's) on behalf of Petrobras on the Roncador field, offshore Brazil, in 1360 m of water. A combined installation technique with J-lay of the critical touchdown area and traditional reeling for the remaining flowline/riser part was applied. The operations related to reeling the pipe sections onto the reel, reeling off, welding on site (J-lay sections) and transfer to P-36 have been outlined. The paper describes in more detail the analyses performed to evaluate the effects of using the reeling method for installation of the risers. The following issues are addressed: riser torsional effects due to residual curvature, effects of residual stresses, ovalisation, strain concentrations, variability in yield strength, riser analyses, reeling analyses, fatigue aspects, hoop buckling and propagating buckling.

Review of research on interactions between deepwater steel catenary risers and soft clay seabeds

“…The use of SCR in deepwater developments is becoming more popular with a number of SCR's already installed offshore Brazil and in the Gulf of Mexico, and West Africa [8][9][10][11][12][13] . Current development of SCR technology has focused on better understanding of the touch down region and its interaction with the seabed.…”

An installation system of deepwater risers by an S-lay vessel

“…The process of transferring from the installation vessel to the target platform is indispensable no matter which method is chosen for SCR installation. For SCR installation, most methods currently prefer to J-lay process (Bates et al, 2006;Cavicchi and Ardavanis, 2003;Wolbers and Hovinga, 2003;Hansen et al, 2001) for this transfer process, because the riser is handled in the vertical direction. The challenges for the S-lay vessel HYSY201 in riser installation at SCS are:…”