| 15th Anniversary | Mariner Dulcimer Subsea Development | INTEC Flow Assurance Tools | Note from the President |
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| Technical Training | Employee of the Quarter | INTEC Returns to OTC | New Project Awards |
 Mariner Dulcimer Subsea Development  | ||
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Mariner Energy, Inc.began production from its Dulcimer subsea completion on April 4, 1999 at the anticipated production reate of 60 million cubic feet of gas per day.  Mariner is a Houston-based oil and gas exploration company with principal operations in the Gulf of Mexico and along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The Dulcimer well, in Garden Banks Block 367, is Mariner's fourth deepwater Gulf of Mexico subsea development project. Start-up of the well was the culmination of the fast-tract development of the discovery well drilled early in 1998. The subsea well in BG 367 is located in 1,167 feet of water with production tied back approximately 14 miles to the host platform, Chevron's Garden Banks 236 structure. The host platform is located in 685 feet of water. GB 236 also serves as host platform for the Mariner Mustique subsea completion.
Holes Found in Flowline at 1000-ft depths INTEC's involvement in the Dulcimer project began in January 1998 with flow assurance analyses to determine flowline sizes, predict methanol injection requirements for hydrate prevention and aid in development of the architecture of the overall subsea system. The scope expanded in March 1999 to include flowline survey supervision, and route selection, flowline systems design and construction supervision and quality assurance during manufacture of the umbilical flowline. INTEC personnel (including Gary McCullough as Project Manager) were integrated into the Dulcimer Project Team, which was comprised of Mariner Personnel, other consultants, and representatives of vendors and contractors involved in the project. |
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Fast-track Development Enabled with Equipment and Know-how Fast-track development of the project ws possible as Mariner was able to utilize long lead equipment already in inventory. That equipment included the subsea tree, the control pod and the subsurface safety valves. The plan for development of the Dulcimer subsea well was similar to the Mariner general subsea development approach utilized on other developments and drew heavily on the philosophies, equipment and experiences of the Mariner Mustique, Shasta and MC-357 projects. The subsea tree is a Cameron 10,000 psi, horizontal tree. The well is controlled by an electro-hydraulic multiplex control system supplied by KOP/FSSL. Oceaneering-Multiflex supplied the umbilical for hydraulic supply, electgrical signals and chemical injection conduits to the well. Host platform facilities included a deck extension supporting a new line heater and launcher/receiver module as well as chemical injection and methanol storage facilities.
The Dulcimer well is tied back to GB 236 through dual 4-inch flowlines designed for the 6,000 psi shut-in pressure of the completion. The dual lines provide a path for pigging the flowlines
Team Effort
Key INTEC Involvement Contributes to Dulcimer Success |
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INTEC'S Flow Assurance Tools
With the recent addition of OLGA and PVTSim, it is time to present a review of our Flow Assurance and Operability software suite. INTEC’s Flow Assurance and Operability work involves the use of several state-of-the-art software packages. INTEC has developed expertise in all of them.
PIPESIM and Multiflash are Important INTEC Tools
Multiflash from Infochem Computer Services Ltd. is a fluids physical property and phase behavior software package used to develop property tables, to calculate hydrate dissociation curves and hydrate inhibition requirements, and to evaluate reservoir fluid phase behavior.
Fluid Characterization and Wax Phase Behavior Modeling
OLGA builds INTEC Multiphase Flow Models |
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Technical Training
One of the responsibilities assigned to the Engineering Department is Technical Training. The two people within our organization who work with the Engineering Manager to make Technical Training work are Carol Windham and Dr. Basim Mekha.
Training Calendar on Intranet
Vendor Presentations help keep INTEC Engineers Up To Date
So far in 1999, the Technical Training team has held approximately 20 vendor-sponsored lunchtime presentations and 10 employee-presented Brown Bag Lunches. In addition, personnel have visited two vendor sites, a technical software training session has been held (MathCad), and we have had two in-house technical presentations.
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| INTEC Returns to the OTC | ||
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| Following on the success of last year’s OTC entrée for INTEC Engineering, the company returned to the largest exhibition of offshore oil and gas technology with a bigger and better presence.
“Chart the Seas of Technology” was this year’s conference theme. INTEC’s additional 10 feet of exhibit space was focused on just this capability – pipeline and fiber-optic cable route selection and
Attendance this year totaled 44,749, with 1900 companies represented. The attendance was slightly lower than last year, but there were more companies represented.
INTEC’s display was staffed by company principals as well as senior engineers and Business Unit Managers. General Managers of INTEC overseas offices – Kuala Lumpur, Delft, and Buenos Aires – were also present.
INTEC-authored papers were received with great interest at this year’s OTC:
Pipeline Routing and Engineering for Ultra-Deepwater Developments (OTC 10708), by Simon A. Bonnell, Malcolm S. Blackmore, and Christophe K.W. Tam, described the necessity of pipeline routing and engineering in the more hostile frontier deepwater exploration areas. Examples were made of INTEC Engineering pioneering engineering accomplishments on Malampaya (Philippines), Mensa (Gulf of Mexico), and BlueStream (Black Sea).
Performance Record for FPSOs and Shuttle Tankers (OTC 11002), by Kim Wallace and Stacy Zaner. This topic was the result of a DeepStar study conducted by INTEC on oilspills worldwide pertaining to floating production and storage operations.
Visitors to the OTC booth included senior management from Total, Exxon, BP Amoco, Murphy Oil, SANTOS USA, Texaco, Conoco, Chevron, Shell, Phillips, Kerr-McGee, Enron, Mobil, Pogo Producing, Kuwait Oil Co., ETPM, Egyptian General Petroleum Corp., Pertamina, and others. The INTEC “World Leader in Deepwater Technology” OTC theme was again presented to the offshore world, backed by INTEC’s 15 years of pioneering success in the world’s deepwater frontier areas. | ||
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| INTEC'S Employee of the Quarter
Sharon Rich, Senior Project Engineer in INTEC’s Pipeline/Flowline Department, joined the company in July 1996. Since that time, she has gained industry recognition from the papers presented at OTC in 1998 (OTC 8672) and at OPT in Amsterdam earlier this year. “Oil & Gas Journal” and “Pipeline & Gas” have published her article, co-authored by Alvin Alleyne, entitled “Buried Expansion Loops Control Offshore Line Expansion, Buckling”. Sharon is a natural Mentor and many of our younger engineers have benefited greatly from their association with her.
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While Sharon can be found in the office from early morning to late into the evening, her husband, Alan, may well be offshore in his office, the “Ocean Clipper”. Alan is a Chief Engineer for Diamond Offshore. Sharon and Alan met at college on the first day of their freshman year and studied together until their graduation from Texas A&M with Marine Engineering degrees. Sharon spends her precious spare time designing and creating stained glass pieces and Alan’s interest is woodworking.
For the last three years, Sharon and Alan have been working with an architect designing their dream home and now that dream is about to become a reality as they plan to start construction on their 5-acre lot near Lake Houston. The house will include work rooms for the stained glass and woodworking projects and Sharon has specially designed windows throughout to accommodate her stained glass. Moving to the Lake Houston area will enable Sharon to spend more time water skiing. Between busy schedules and no convenient place to go, she has missed out on this favorite pastime for the past several years.
Sharon’s contributions to the Engineering Department, her ability to share her knowledge, and the work ethic she demonstrates daily have made her an invaluable asset to INTEC.
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A man wanted to give his mother a nice brooch for Mother’s Day. As she was an avid puzzler, he decided to put the little jewelry box inside a wooden puzzle, pretty much as shown in the accompanying figure. Since this was a busy man, he decided to have this contraption made, and asked several wood shops to give him a price. He gave them a sketch with the rough overall dimensions and specified that it should be made out of dark hardwood in time for the day in question, which was 10 days away. He gave the job to the lowest bidder, who had estimated as follows:
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| The customer gave the wood shop the box with the brooch inside a week before the crucial day, made a 50% down payment, and asked them to call him when it was ready.
Since the shop had a lot of other work, the manager figured that three days would be just fine to complete the work. He had learned about management principles and knew that it was important to (1) organize the work according to location, material and process, (2) the more people the more progress, (3) time pressure works, and (4) no trial and error. So he started on Wednesday and sent out for a plank of maple wood since this was the cheapest, figuring that he would use dark stain. On Thursday he had one of his cutters cut the twelve blocks to the dimensions indicated on the drawing, who then proceeded to cut the notches. On Friday the sander sanded the blocks and passed them to the painter.
The manager got busy with something else the first days and didn’t look at the work until Friday morning. He decided that it would be a good idea to try and assemble the puzzle, but when he did, he found that some pieces didn’t fit while others had too much play. He started measuring and found that half the pieces had the wrong dimensions, and would have to be done again.
However, there was not enough wood left, so he called the customer to ask if pine would also be acceptable. The customer told him that when he said dark hardwood he had expected mahogany, rather than maple, and certainly not pine. A discussion ensued in which the manager tried to get more time and money; the customer agreed to extend the delivery to Saturday afternoon, but refused to pay more. More wood was bought (although they couldn’t get the same color), and more cutters were marshaled to make up for lost time. It turned out that, as new pieces were finished and the puzzle assembled, some of the old pieces now didn’t fit any more. This was handled by bringing more sanders on Saturday who worked till the whole thing was more or less right. |
 When on Saturday afternoon the customer came at the agreed time, they had just started painting.
The puzzler obviously was very disappointed, and decided just to take the brooch to his mother, and forget about the puzzle. The next week he came by to try and get his money back, but the wood shop manager refused, and instead claimed additional charges. Eventually the customer went to small claims court, where he was awarded the puzzle, while the shop got to keep its 50%. Nobody was happy. Now for the moral of this little story. The customer assumed that the wood shop manager had enough sense to understand he wanted a mahogany puzzle, not some 12 machined pieces of wood. The trick of a good puzzle is the tight fit since otherwise it is too easy to find the solution. It didn’t occur to him to give the shop detailed instructions, as he assumed they were a competent outfit. The wood shop manager caught on when he tried to fit the pieces, but too late to make the necessary changes in the process. What was missing in this story is an experienced puzzler. |
Either the customer or someone on his behalf (he was a busy man, remember), should have made clear to the shop that the purpose was to make a puzzle and surprise mother. The puzzler would have prepared the necessary work definition including a drawing specifying dimensions, tolerances, materials and finish, a material specification, and specified that the fit be checked at various times. The puzzler would have checked in regularly with the shop during the work to see how things were progressing, and to give suggestions and answer questions.
We at INTEC are puzzlers. We come up with ideas and convert these into conceptual designs. When at this stage a construction contractor is given the task to do the detailed design and build the project (as in an EPC contract), he may look at the job as a construction assignment (buy wood, saw blocks and paint them), and not realize that a puzzle must first be solved. It leads to mistakes and unnecessary rework, design changes after start of construction, budgets and time schedule overruns, and acrimony between the parties involved.
To avoid this, a detailed design must be completed and either provided to the builder (the traditional approach), or in the case of an EPC contract model, he must retain a team of puzzlers and allow enough time and resources to convert the concept to a detailed design ready for his implementation. The builder’s staff must keep their impatience in check, and not start “doing” before there is clear definition on what to do. The puzzlers should stay involved during the building phase to keep checking the work against the original objectives and assure things still “fit”. At the same time, customers must realize that they need to allow time and resources for this process if they want to avoid being disappointed later.
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| NEW AWARDS THIS PAST QUARTER INCLUDE: | ||
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 For Shell Deepwater Systems, Inc., Shell Bonga Conceptual Design
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For Mariner Energy, Inc., Dulcimer Flow Assurance Training
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| INTEC Engineering, Inc. Intercontinental Building 15600 JFK Boulevard, 9th Floor Houston, TX 77032, USA tel: (281) 987-0800 Primary Fax: (281) 987-3838 Admin Fax: (281) 987-2002 e-mail: info@intec-hou.com |  | INTEC Engineering (SEA) SDN. BHD. Suite 12.2, 12th Floor Menara Aik Hua Changkat Raja Chulan 50200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: +60 (3) 202-2488 Fax: +60 (3) 202-3488 e-mail: info@intec-mal.com.my | | INTEC Engineering B.V. Poortweg 14 2612 PA Delft, The Netherlands P.O. Box 3178 2601 DD Delft, The Netherlands tel: +31 (15) 256-5675 FAX: +31 (015) 256-0194 email: info@intec-delft.com | | INTEC Engineering S.R.L. Lavalle #465 Planta Baja 1047, Buenos Aires Argentina tel: +54 (1) 14 327-4120 FAX: +54 (1) 14 327-4121 email: info@intec-hou.com | | INTEC-egis Adelaide House 200, Adelaide Terrace Perth, Western Australia 6000 tel: + 61 (8) 9220 9374 FAX: + 61 (8) 9325 9897 email: info@intec-hou.com |
from the platform. Route selection for the flowlines was particularly challenging as the seabed between GB 367 and 236 includes areas of significant seafloor relief and rock outcrops. Conventional risers were installed to connect the flowlines to the platform facilities. A rigid jumper, installed by ADS operators during completion operations, connects the Dulcimer well to the flowline system
survey management and supervision.