The project commenced in September 1998, after award by PEMEX to Compania de Servicios de Compresion de Campeche, S. A. de C. V. (CSCC), a consortium consisting of Westcoast Energy, Marubeni and CFC/CCC. INTEC also provided due diligence services to CSCC to assess the design, fabrication and installation capabilities of the proposed EPCI contractor prior to the bid to PEMEX during April/May 1998.

Platform Complex
The compression platform consists of an 8-leg jacket in 140 ft water depth, supporting a 2-level process deck, compression modules containing Nuovo Pignone PGT25 turbine packages, Rolls Royce power generators and living quarters. The main compression platform is connected via a tripod-supported bridge to the existing AKAL GR Process Complex. It is also linked to a flare tripod via two bridges and an intermediate tripod. The lower deck weighed 1455 short tons, upper deck was 1630 short tons, and the compression modules were 920 short tons each.

Platform Installation
During the installation phase, the INTEC team reviewed the installation engineering, witnessed loadouts and tie down of platform components, liaised with the marine warranty surveyors, and performed due diligence during offshore installation onboard the 2500-ton capacity derrick vessel STANISLAV YUDIN. We understand from Oscar Byington and John Burns, INTEC Senior Construction Supervisors, that the Sunday Barbecue Fiestas were the highlight of this phase!

INTEC Project Team
The INTEC team at the fabrication yard in Tuxpan (Charlie Corr, Paddy Devereux and Ken Christie) relocated offshore along with Alex Mayants and Jim Barnes for the hookup and commissioning phase. Felix Hammontree inspected the electrical buildings and living quarters fabrication in Houston, and witnessed acceptance tests at the TESLA facility. Stuart Smithson closely monitored welding/NDT and structural painting issues during fabrication in Tuxpan and Tampico.

CSCC and Westcoast Energy have expressed their appreciation of INTEC’s role throughout the project, and especially INTEC’s participation in the success of the important phases of the offshore installation, particularly during the deck and compression module lifts.

The INTEC Engineering Riser Group provides total project services for fixed, top tensioned, steel catenary, hybrid riser towers and various flexible pipe riser system configurations. The riser group offers all levels of engineering services for the full range of riser systems, including front end field development feasibility and cost studies, risk evaluations, conceptual, preliminary and detailed engineering design, procurement services including preparation and management of vendor work packages, preparation of invitation to bid (ITB) documents, construction management and inspection services, and overall project management.

Riser Group Team
INTEC has assembled a strong team of engineers with extensive in-depth riser system knowledge and experience. Analysis software available to the team includes the AQWA suite of programs for vessel motion analysis, MCS International FREECOM, MODES and FLEXCOM for frequency and time domain riser response, ORCAFLEX for general time domain response and installation studies, SHEAR7 for VIV fatigue assessments, and ANSYS for component local stress analysis and design. These computer programs operate on a network of high specification PC’s, and are supported by INTEC’s fully verified proprietary calculation and design procedures.

Dr. John Shanks has been appointed as Manager of the INTEC Riser Engineering Group. John has more than 25 years experience in riser systems engineering with operators, consultants and contractors. His project portfolio includes riser systems for Hutton, Snorre and Heidrun TLP’s, Teal Guillemot FPSO and Jotun FPSO. John has been leading the SCR engineering for the Texaco Agbami FPSO Project.

INTEC Riser Projects
Current INTEC projects having significant riser system content include the El Paso Prince Field Development. INTEC has been awarded the detailed design of the Export Steel Catenary Risers (SCRs) for the Prince Field. The 12 inch oil and 12 inch gas export SCRs will be connected to the Moses TLP in 1492 ft water depth in Ewing Bank 1003. This is the first time that INTEC will have complete responsibility for the detailed design of SCRs attached to a floating structure. The Prince SCRs will be designed for comparatively shallow water depth; the shallowest water depth to date for SCRs connected to a floating platform is1700 ft for the Morpeth TLP. For BP Amoco GOM deepwater field developments, INTEC has recently been awarded a contract by BP Amoco for the engineering of their deepwater pipeline systems in the GOM. One of the key technical areas associated with this work is the design of infrastructure in water depths in excess of 6,000 feet. Also, INTEC has recently completed a study for the BP Amoco Crazy Horse field based on new concepts and technology for deepwater exploration and production.

Paragon Engineering Services Inc. will focus on onshore and the continental shelf offshore pipelines and potential booster stations. INTEC Engineering Inc. will concentrate on deepwater infrastructure. Both companies will work closely with BP Amoco through the project review and appraisal process, and Paragon Engineering Services Inc. will additionally provide overall project administrative support to BP Amoco. Paragon Engineering Services Inc. and INTEC Engineering Inc. are both located in Houston.

"We are very anxious to get this work started,” said Jerry Wenzel, BP Amoco General Manager for this offshore transportation project, “as we prepare to build transportation systems to deliver this oil and gas to market.” The value of these contracts is approximately $8 million during the first year. The companies will help BP Amoco review and select routes, equipment, and transportation system components, leading to a system availability by the time the first of these fields is ready for production, as early as 2003.

Chief among the areas awaiting infrastructure development is the southern Mississippi Canyon, the southern Atwater Valley and the Green Canyon areas of the Gulf. BP Amoco is an international company involved in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas; refining, marketing, supply and transportation of hydrocarbons; and manufacturing. Source: BP Amoco Corporation

INTEC will have a direct role in realizing BP Amoco’s challenging ultra deepwater projects. The project team has just commenced initial planning for the various engineering activities. INTEC Project Team leaders include Alvin Alleyne (Project Manager), Bruce Chandler, Brian McShane, Gene Mullee and Jim Lentz.

INTEC Awarded Vastar Contract

Horn Mountain Export Pipelines
INTEC has been awarded a contract for preliminary engineering of the Horn Mountain Field export pipeline system. VASTAR and OXY plan to jointly develop the field, in Mississippi Canyon Block 127, which is located in 5,400 ft of water. Different development options are being considered, several of which include export SCRs and pipelines to shallow water platforms. The work includes design of deepwater risers and pipelines, cost estimates, preparation of marine survey and pipeline installation bid packages and subsequent bid evaluations. The INTEC Project Team includes Vural Dolen (Project Manager), Chris Tam, Antonio Critsinelis, Brad Meadows, Simon Bonnell, John Shanks, Jan Janardhanan, Diego Lamacchia, Todd Phillips and Dan Alcott.

Lessons Learned
The oil and gas pipeline system final design required only minimal changes from the preliminary engineering design used to submit the 1996 State Right-of-Way permit application, through to the final as-built configuration. A limit state design approach for pipeline bending was used to address potential Arctic environmental loadings such as ice keel gouging of the seafloor and subsea permafrost thaw subsidence. A result of the very thorough Environmental Impact Statement and extensive pipeline regulatory review was the inclusion of a pipeline leak detection sensor strapped to the pipeline bundle. The subsea pipeline system integrity and leak detection capabilities are critical issues in an Arctic environment. Other lessons learned relate to: 1) welding and inspection procedures applicable for limit state pipeline design, 2) use of the stable landfast sea ice as a work surface during pipeline construction, 3) offshore trenching using extended reach backhoes, and 4) using conventional sidebooms to lower pipe 50 feet from the surface of the floating ice sheet to the bottom of the pipeline trench in water depths of 37 ft.

In addition to potential applications of Northstar Project experience for future subsea Arctic pipeline projects, limit state design for pipe bending is of particular interest. Pipelines exposed to potentially severe displacement-controlled bending loads can be designed to safely operate with strain levels many that far exceed conventional yield stress allowable levels.

While walking along a narrow asphalted country road I noticed in the damp morning many a slug crossing the pavement. Although the traffic was very light, I observed that not all slugs managed to make it across, judging from their flattened remains. The question came up what chance a slug had to survive the crossing and whether the species even could be threatened by extinction. To help define the problem I took some measurements and made a number of assumptions that seemed reasonable based on my observations.

• Slugs vary in length between 5 and 13 cm; it is reasonable to assume that the length of a slug (as for humans) follows a normal distribution.
• A 10-cm slug was observed to move at 8 cm/min.; it appears that a slug moves at a speed that is directly proportional to its length.
• Not all slugs move straight across; the angle seems to vary between +/- 45 degrees to a perpendicular to the road axis; no information was obtained regarding the probability distribution of this angle, but again, a normal distribution would seem reasonable.
• The road is 4.5 m wide.
• Cars drive normally in the middle, but move to the opposite side when passing a traveler on foot; all foot travelers are going in the same direction (west); only small cars were seen and an occasional farm tractor, passing on average every 9 minutes; in addition, about two horse or bullock drawn carts passed in an hour.
• Foot travelers pass on average every 20 minutes.

The questions are: (1) what is the probability that a slug reaches the other side of the road; (2) how many slugs are gone before their time on an average spring day; and (3) are slugs threatened by extinction in that region?

I also noticed that worms crossed the road, and at much greater speed, but let’s leave this to another time.

Meanwhile there is nothing sluggish about business at INTEC. We are back in a steady growth mode and have been successful in capturing a number of major contracts that now amount to an order book of unprecedented size. This means a lot of hard work for all to keep up with the growth and project related movements. I want to particularly mention our support staff who have to arrange office space and computer facilities, introduce new staff, assure that the mail still gets delivered to the right place, and generally keep the wheels greased, often late at night or on weekends. Special thanks to you!

W. J. Timmermans
President

SSB Technology Bazaar
INTEC Engineering (SEA) Sdn. Bhd., participated in a Technology Bazaar held at Sarawak Shell Berhad (SSB) in Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia from May 22 to 24, 2000. Thirty-one companies including INTEC participated in the exhibition and technical presentations. Visitors to the exhibition and
participants in the presentations included engineers from SSB and Carigali Sarawak Operations, and representatives from Brunei Shell Production, Petronas Carigali (Kuala Lumpur) and Petronas Research. Exhibitors and speakers participating in the SSB Technology Bazaar focused on technologies for marginal field development, gas application equipment, subsea production and FPSO systems.

FPSO’s Present and Future
INTEC participated in a workshop conducted by the Offshore Technology Research Center featuring “FPSO’s Present and Future”, held in Houston, Texas on June 7-8, 2000. Ken MacKenzie, INTEC Floating Systems Business Unit Manager, was a panelist for the session entitled “Oil Storage and Offloading”. The workshop was sponsored by Minerals Management Service, the US Coast Guard and DeepStar.

Paul completed his accountancy qualifications in 1981 and began his career by initially working as an internal auditor for a Public Listed Company in 1982. Before joining INTEC, Paul held similar positions in a company distributing electrical appliances in East and West Malaysia, and a company who was an operator of a world trade convention and exhibition hall in the food and beverage industry.

Paul has more than 17 years experience in audit and accounting work. During his career, Paul has traveled to Los Angeles, California to oversee accounting functions for a hotel chain, and has traveled to the INTEC Houston office in 1996 and 1998 for familiarization and updating with INTEC corporate accounting software.

Paul and his wife Maria have two children. Mark, age 9, is attending Primary 3 this year, and Diane, age 6, will be in Primary 1 next year. Paul’s hobbies include listening to music, traveling and playing snooker. He and his family recently visited Penang Island off the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia for vacation, and to sample the world renowned Penang cuisine. Next planned destination is Langkawi Island during the December school holiday.