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Oilfield Technology
May
2016
D
evelopers have been looking for oil in seabeds since the early
20
th
century. The first significant development came in 1937,
when a large, rich reserve was identified on a 33 000 acre
estate 20 miles off the shore of Louisiana, USA. Since this initial
project, oil exploration has become more widespread. As of 2015,
there were 1297 offshore oil rigs requiring a complex network
of subsea pipelines to transport the oil back to shore.
1
This
presents a two-fold challenge. Not only do the installations need
to take place out at sea, they also need to be protected from the
harsh marine environment. As more pipelines have been laid in
challenging environments, technology has needed to develop to
protect the pipelines, whether they are laid on sand or stone.
Challenges in the 21
st
century
Energy requirements are increasing dramatically due to
population growth and energy intensive services like data centres
and manufacturing. For example, demand for natural gas is
expected to rise by 2.4 % each year until 2018, according to the
International Energy Agency.
2
This demand is pushing engineers
to develop the technologies to install pipelines and platforms to
access oil and gas in progressively hostile and deeper offshore
environments.
One of the ways to ensure reliable, safe, and fully functional
operation of a cable or pipeline is to bury it beneath the seabed
using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Most commonly, a cable
will be buried at a depth of up to 3 m, although this depends on the
PROTECTING
PIPELINES
Nexans show how new ROV systems are
pushing the boundaries of subsea
installations.
