Page 94: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (May/Jun 2015)

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Pipelines

Shallow water hazards

Fishing activities in the region are not

Middle East, explained at Subsea Expo

Protecting, inspecting fully controlled — ? sh traps can often held in Aberdeen earlier this year. and repairing pipelines in be found on pipelines and cables — and

Pipelines in the region are predomi- there are no concrete abandonments nantly in shallow waters and prone to the shallow waters of the plans, which means non-operational damage. The seabed is also quite hard,

Middle East isn’t a s easy pipelines are also left in-situ, unpre- making burial costly and often uneco- served. Environmental guidelines are nomical on projects. as it sounds. Elaine Maslin

Earlier development of ? elds in the still immature, Kulshrestha says. reports.

More than 50% of pipeline damage regions has not been systematically is caused by anchoring (21%) or impact planned and coordinated, often with from anchor or dropped multiple operators following objects (30%) while a large an individual design approach, he Middle East region is home to proportion of the remain- creating a “spaghetti of pipe- around 85,000km of pipelines, der damages is the result of lines, cables and umbilical in

T or about 2.5% of the global total corrosion (26%), according the ? eld, crisscrossing each pipeline assets, representing, theoreti- to a probability analysis of other.” cally, a relatively small issue to deal with Statutory guidelines regard- damage to offshore pipelines when it comes to pipeline inspection and ing movement of marine traf? c by ship factors, by Liu, Hu maintenance. around pipelines, vessel anchor- and Zhang, presented to the

However, it is not the reality in the age and loading areas are not Transportation Research area, as Manoj Kulshrestha, McDermott well established. There is no Board annual meeting in

Manoj Kulshrestha well-de? ned protection phi- 2013.

losophy. Some of the unburied pipelines In the Middle East, the causes are no

McDermott’s DP2 o