According to CSIRO, more than 80% of Australia’s gas resources are in remote, offshore areas as much as 300km offshore and at depths greater than 1km.

According to Flagship Director, Dr Kate Wilson, realising the full potential of these resources requires the development of new, safe, economically viable and environmentally sound transportation technologies.

Wealth from Oceans has been undertaking research related to platform-free fields for several years, investigating ways to dispense with traditional platforms to open up exploration and resource development in waters too deep for conventional technologies.

But producing gas from distant deepwater fields will also require safe, reliable and cost-effective ultra-long pipelines. On October 31, Wealth from Oceans launched the Collaboration Cluster on Subsea Pipelines (CCSP), an $A11 million collaboration to unlock stranded offshore oil and gas reserves through improved subsea pipeline design.

“It presents an enormous scientific challenge, so we created this cluster to harness the strength and breadth of relevant expertise from across Australia,” Dr Wilson said at the University of Western Australia launch.

The CCSP brings together the research capabilities of The University of Western Australia, Curtin University of Technology, The University of Queensland, Monash University, The University of Sydney, Flinders University and CSIRO.

Its initial funding consists of a $3.6 million grant through the Flagship Collaboration Fund and in-kind contributions totalling $7.4 million from the participating universities.

Cluster leader Professor Mark Cassidy of UWA said transporting oil and gas in extra-long offshore pipelines is difficult.

“We need to think about the stability of pipeline structures over decades in strong currents, a shifting seabed, steep seabed slopes and potential geo-hazards such as submarine landslides,” he said.

The cluster’s research program spans the spectrum of pipeline design.

“Projects will investigate seabed characterisation and morphology, structural integrity, pipeline monitoring, geo-hazards and full-life reliability,” Cassidy said.

“This will involve everything from sophisticated computer modelling and sea-floor movement prediction, to understanding tsunami effects and exploring the use of autonomous underwater and remotely operated vehicles.”

Improved pipeline technology will also help achieve the flagship’s vision of replacing traditional oil and gas rigs with platform-free fields, according to Wilson.

The key technology issues in deepwater environments are flow assurance and subsea processing.

Aimed at addressing this problem, the platform-free fields program focuses on subsea production and processing with ultra-long tiebacks of up to 200-300km.

According to CSIRO researcher Dr Edson Nakagawa, dispensing with traditional platforms will open up development in waters too deep for conventional technologies.

“Most of Australia’s gas is in WA waters, and a lot of that is considered remote and stranded,” Nakagawa said.

“To make it viable to developing that gas we have to reduce capital costs associated with production, and a good percentage of capital costs is in the platforms.

“If you can significantly reduce the size of the platforms to start with, and then eventually eliminate platforms, you might unlock some of this gas.”

All around the world, work is being done on platform-free fields. Norway’s Ormen Lange field, operated by StatoilHydro in the development phase and Norske Shell in the production phase, is using 24 subsea wellheads in four seabed templates on the ocean floor that are connected directly by two pipelines to an onshore processing plant.

But CSIRO and its partners aim to go further than the Ormen Lange venture and eventually produce and process gas at subsea level.

“We want to separate water and gas at subsea, reinject produced water into the reservoir and pipe the gas to shore,” Nakagawa said.

In working towards this goal, overseas technology, such as that used at Ormen Lange cannot be simply transplanted to Australia; instead technology must be developed for local conditions, according to Nakagawa.

Nakagawa and colleagues are also working on flow assurance, researching ways to avoid the formation of hydrates and to ensure small hydrates crystals won’t block pipelines.

They are also looking at “designer fluids” that could be injected into wells to reduce the permeability of water so that water is less likely to mix with oil and gas and block the flow of hydrocarbons.

“If you reduce water production, you can reduce platform size,” Nakagawa said.

Wealth from Oceans is aiming to have a compact surface production system ready for use in major offshore developments in the next four years and subsea separation systems in 7-10 years. Ultimately, in the more distant future, it is aiming for down hole separations systems.

Partners in the platform-free fields project include the Western Australian Energy Research Alliance (involving CSIRO, the University of Western Australia and Curtin University), Chevron, Woodside, the University of New South Wales, Institut Francais du Petrole, University of Campinas (Brazil) and University Simon Bolivar (Venezuela).

First published in the November 2007 issue of Petroleum magazine