42
54
International Edition
Volume 74, Number 12
December 2014
CONTENTS
Offshore (ISSN 0030-0608) is published 12 times a year, monthly by Penn Well, 1421 S. Sheridan Road, Tulsa, OK 74112. Periodicals class postage paid at Tulsa, OK, and additional offices.
Copyright 2014 by Penn Well. (Registered in U.S. Patent Trademark Office.) All rights reserved. Permission, however, is granted for libraries and others registered with the Copyright Clearance
Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, Phone (978) 750-8400, Fax (978) 646-8600 to photocopy articles for a base fee of $1 per copy of the article plus 35¢ per page.
Payment should be sent directly to the CCC. Requests for bulk orders should be addressed to the Editor. Subscription prices: US $112.00 per year, Canada/Mexico 145.00 per year, All
other countries $184.00 per year (Airmail delivery: $257.00). Worldwide digital subscriptions: $112.00 per year. Single copy sales: US $11.00 per issue, Canada/Mexico $13.00 per issue, All
other countries $15.00 per issue (Airmail delivery: $24.00). Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: P.O. Box 122, Niagara Falls, ON L2E 6S4. Back issues are available upon request.
POSTMASTER send form 3579 to Offshore, P.O. Box 3264, Northbrook, IL 60065-3264. To receive this magazine in digital format, go to www.offshoresubscribe.com.
Celebrating 60 Years of Trends, Tools, and Technology
TOP 5 PROJECTS
Shell expands presence in deepwater GoM with Mars B ...... 36
Shell’s Mars B project, located in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico,
produced frst oil in the frst quarter of this year. It is the frst time that
signifcant infrastructure has been added to an existing deepwater feld
in the Gulf, says Shell.
Liwan marks frst-ever
deepwater gas development offshore China.......................... 38
Husky’s Liwan Gas Project is the frst deepwater gas development
offshore China. The project, in block 29/26, delivered frst production
this year, approximately seven years following its discovery and is one
of the fastest developments in the world for a large-scale gas discovery
in deepwater.
Statoil commences production at Gudrun.............................. 42
Statoil ASA and its partners started production from the $3.4-billion Gudrun oil and gas feld development in the North Sea on June 16, 2014,
making it the frst new Statoil-operated platform to come onstream on
the Norwegian continental shelf since 2005.
Total adopts all-electric, subsea multi-phase
approach for mixed-crude CLOV development ...................... 44
In June, Total lifted frst oil from CLOV, its fourth deepwater development “pole” in block 17 offshore Angola. Like its predecessors Girassol,
Dalia and Pazfor, CLOV routes production through a network of subsea
fowlines to a spread-moored FPSO.
Papa-Terra marks frst use
of dry tree foating technology offshore Brazil ...................... 46
Petrobras started production from the Papa-Terra feld on Nov. 11,
2013. Papa-Terra is a heavy-oil feld in block BC- 20 of the Campos basin
offshore Brazil in 1,190 m ( 3,903 ft) of water. Development consists of
an FPSO, the frst tension leg wellhead platform in Brazil, and a tender
assisted drilling unit.
60 YEARS OF OFFSHORE
From the archives: Pre-salt plays
buoy Brazil’s offshore development plans ............................. 48
Selected from the July 2011 issue of Offshore, this article describes how
the country’s pre-salt discoveries “transformed the nature and focus of
its oil sector.”
Offshore celebrates 17 years of posters................................. 50
Seventeen years ago, the late Editor-in-Chief Leonard LeBlanc and
Sales Manager David Davis of Offshore magazine welcomed a proposal
from Mustang Engineering (now Wood Group Mustang) to publish
a worldwide survey of offshore pipelay vessels. Offshore agreed to
publish the survey as a visually graphic poster to represent the information. This poster started the series in June 1997, and now, 115 posters
have been published, and more than four million printed copies have
been distributed as supplements inside the magazine, and at numerous
global industry conferences.
AFRICA
Chemical remedial sand control
using the subsea fowline succeeds....................................... 52
Sand production is a major concern to the industry and is more critical
today, especially in offshore environments where tolerance to sand
production is low. Sand infux into the wellbore may lead to problems
such as valve and pipeline erosion, sand deposits in separators, and
economic loss from production limitations. Mechanical sand control
methods are considered reliable and there are options available, from
simple to sophisticated, depending on the situation.
Local content rules in Nigeria
expected to transform West Africa......................................... 54
In 2010, the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Act, or the Local
Content Act as it is commonly called, became law. The act had been 10
years in the making and prescribes minimum thresholds for the use of
local services and materials with the overarching objectives of ensuring
on-going job creation and improving skills of the local labor force as
well as participation and ownership for local Nigerians in the country’s
developing oil and gas industry.