Page 80: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2015)

TECH NOTES

Mooring Integrity Monitoring:

BMT Answers the Challenge

By Rizwan Sheikh, Senior data analyst at BMT Scienti? c Marine Services he need for mooring integrity vendors. The guideline reinforces how tice is to engineer mooring systems that hence extended ? eld shut down. Based monitoring has of late come mooring integrity management through can withstand extreme environments solely on these statistics, there is a clear back under the spotlight, not effective monitoring and data manage- with single or even multiple line failure business case for effective mooring in-

Tleast because the use of ? oat- ment can provide information to help de- scenarios. Even so, the offshore industry tegrity monitoring. ing production systems in the offshore tect mooring line failure and assist with has experienced numerous unexpected One of the challenges that emerged oil and gas industry has been predicted validation of mooring design strength mooring line failures in recent years that, from these failings is the need to moni- to grow at a signi? cant rate between and fatigue analyses. in a small number of cases, have result- tor mooring system integrity reliably for now and 2017 with a peak in the num- Station keeping through the life of a ed in mooring system failure. On aver- the life of the facility without the need ber of new builds expected to occur in ? eld is of critical importance for ? oat- age between 2001 and 2011, there were for costly inspection or maintenance of 2016/2017. Recently, an updated indus- ing production facilities in all parts of more than two mooring system failures subsea sensors. In general, most moor- try guideline on mooring integrity has the world. The mooring system performs per year. During this period, nine were ing line monitoring systems that have been issued by Oil & Gas UK with the this function, and although it has not al- multiple line failures and other mooring been deployed to monitor mooring line support of operators, contractors and ways been the case, current design prac- incidents resulted in riser failures and tension have themselves experienced 80 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • AUGUST 2015

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