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Companies

Activity standards is also time consuming and

Standardization – frequently lags behind the deployment more than a buzzword? of new technologies or the inclusion of lessons learned.

An industry-backed project looking at how to increase recovery on “Much of the future Norwegian the Norwegian Continental Shelf has led to a series of joint industry

Continental Shelf (NCS) oil and gas will projects aimed at increasing standardization, to reduce costs and come from marginal projects and tie-

Elaine Maslin delays, and increase quality and safety. reports. backs, where cost and delivery times are critical divers,” according to the report. tandardization in the subsea sector the number is expected to increase. “It is clear… that ‘business as usual’ is no

S has become a hot topic, especially in According to a report by the longer an option.”

Norway. Norwegian Oil & Gas Association (NOG), ‘Business as usual’

A report by DNV GL looking at new market survey data indicates a 50% is no longer an option subsea technology developments, com- increase in demand for subsea Christmas missioned by Norway’s Petroleum Safety trees, to 186-264, for the Norwegian DNV GL’s report, Subsea Facilities –

Authority and published in late March, Continental Shelf (NCS) and Barents Sea Technology Developments, Incidents says “’standardization’ is a buzzword in for 2014-2017. and Future trends, says “standardized the industry.” But, costs are also increasing. Lack of building block design ? eld develop-

Standardization, what it means, how engineering resources, quality supervi- ments” will be one of the two key themes and where it could be implemented, and sion, and manufacturing capacity is for the subsea industry going forward, the its limitations, dominated most debates severe and set to get worse, the NOG other being “the advanced subsea system, at last year’s Underwater Technology report says. Part of the problem is differ- where new and novel technology will be

Conference (UTC) in Bergen (OE: August ences in operator requirements, which developed.” 2013). have a “signi? cant impact” on subsea But, the report stresses that standard-

At this year’s UTC, the focus may be equipment delivery times and costs. ization applies not just to materials, even sharper, and the reasoning is not “Diversity, change and preference speci? cations or interfaces, but also how surprising. More than 50% of Norway’s engineering threatens the ability of the projects are delivered or handed over to part-state-owned company Statoil’s industry to systematically improve safety the client. production is from subsea wells. Overall, performance and asset integrity,” the “The overall aim with standardization there are more than 800 subsea wells off- report says. is to remove work that does not contrib- shore Norway, out of 5000 globally, and At the same time, developing industry ute to either quality or functionality,” it says. “One example today is the lack of a common standard for supply of materi-

Total NCS E&P expenditures by facility type, MUSD als. The effect of this is that the supply 100,000 chain is hesitant to order materials [at 90,000 their] own risk and cost prior to hav-

Subsea tie back ing a contract with a customer in place.

Fixed and ?oater 80,000

Typically, this adds 7-12 months of lead 70,000 time for forgings.” 60,000

Roald Sirevaag, the UTC 2014 program committee chairman, and VP Subsea 50,000

Technology and Diving, Statoil, says: 40,000 “I de? nitely need to do something. But you need an overriding vision of what 30,000 you want to achieve, and that vision has 20,000 been non-existent.” 10,000

Sirevaag’s vision, which he aims to share at UTC, is an analogy with car 0 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 manufacturing, in which manufacturers have different models for different seg-

Norwegian Continental Shelf exploration and production spending, by type of facility,

A vision of the subsea future. Photo from Xvision/UTC. subsea and surface. Source: Rystad Energy UCube.

ments of the market, but still manage to

May 2014 | OE oedigital.com 178 000_OE0514_Activity.indd 178 4/19/14 2:10 PM