Transforming offshore field developments with Pivotree™: an innovative technology solution for fast, cost effective, and low footprint projects
Christopher Merrick A *A
Chris Merrick has over 20 years of experience in subsea engineering, project management, operations, asset integrity, and inspection maintenance and repair. He has experience across the entire lifecycle of offshore developments encompassing engineering, procurement, construction, installation, operations, and decommissioning. He is a specialist in subsea equipment technical reliability, ensuring that facilities meet the highest standards of safety, compliance, and production availability. Pivotree™ is Chris’ idea, conceived to bring more projects for more operators into production, efficiently, safely, and profitably. Chris has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, a Master’s Degree in Oil and Gas Engineering, and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Western Australia, is a Chartered Subsea Engineer, and Fellow of Engineers Australia. |
Abstract
Pivotree™ represents a technology paradigm shift in offshore oil field development, reducing cost and providing a route to market for the operators of stranded resources. Conventional standalone projects, characterised by substantial upfront capital expenditures with complex equipment and high installation costs, are juxtaposed against the Pivotree™ solution, with a markedly reduced capital outlay that retains all the requisite safety and operational features associated with larger systems. A comparative study of activities, materials, and risks concomitant with different field development concepts are analysed for a range of reservoir characteristics, highlighting the financial advantages of the Pivotree™ technology using Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). MCDA allows a systematic assessment and comparison of a broad spectrum of qualitative factors including safety, environmental impact, operability, maintainability, time to deploy, water depth, independence, and abandonment burden and development of a set of economic scenarios with the costs of different development concepts compared over the lifecycle phases from Drilling to Abandonment, and the Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) calculated against a range of oil prices, and operating expenditures. A case study ‘Concept Select’ activity is performed using MCDA to evaluate the range of development options against the listed set of project and technology attributes. A set of weightings is provided for the purpose of analysis by the author equating to the corporate values and strategy of a fictional energy company. The MCDA analysis demonstrates that the Pivotree™ technology can unlock production from the global store of stranded offshore discovered resources.
Keywords: concept select, economically stranded, field development, floating offshore production systems, FPSO, low CAPEX, low-cost, marginal fields, mid-water, mooring, single-point mooring, stranded fields, stranded resources, subsea tree, subsea well.
Chris Merrick has over 20 years of experience in subsea engineering, project management, operations, asset integrity, and inspection maintenance and repair. He has experience across the entire lifecycle of offshore developments encompassing engineering, procurement, construction, installation, operations, and decommissioning. He is a specialist in subsea equipment technical reliability, ensuring that facilities meet the highest standards of safety, compliance, and production availability. Pivotree™ is Chris’ idea, conceived to bring more projects for more operators into production, efficiently, safely, and profitably. Chris has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, a Master’s Degree in Oil and Gas Engineering, and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Western Australia, is a Chartered Subsea Engineer, and Fellow of Engineers Australia. |
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