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INTEC IN DEEPWATER! | ||
| INTEC first opened its doors to the public on March 1, 1984. Its first project, Job No. H-004.01, was for Dallas based Arco Oil and Gas. The subject was "Pipeline Diameter Limitations for Installation in Water Depths to 7,000 feet." In 1998, the offshore industry is close to installing large diameter pipelines in such water depths; small diameter, 12.75 inch diameter pipe, was installed in 5,300 ft water depth in 1997. In 1984, this was just a pipe dream and INTEC was there, part of the dream. In 1998, INTEC is still there, playing a major role in making that dream a reality. The following paragraphs, by way of a few selected INTEC projects, show our ever-increasing involvement in the great deepwater challenge. | ||
| Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Deepwater Floating Production and Transportation Joint Industry Study (JIS), 1984/5 | ||
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| INTEC began its journey into deepwater GOM in 1984 via a Deepwater Floating Production and Transportation Systems JIS. The study evaluated the technical and economic feasibility of semi-submersible and tanker based floating production systems combined with individual and manifolded subsea wells and control systems, flexible and rigid riser concepts, infield flowlines and transmission pipelines. The 12-month study was based on water depths of 1,500 to 3,500 ft. This study was followed in 1986 with a Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Subsea System and Flexible Pipe Riser Enhancements JIS which further evaluated operational, maintenance, repair and reliability requirements of production riser and subsea systems. | ||
| Deepwater Pipeline Design, Installation and Tie-In for North Sea and North Atlantic JIS, 1985/6 | ||
| This JIS assessed the industry capability, at that time, in pipeline design, materials, installation, tie-in and repair, and identified the critical areas which would require development to extend the overall technology to water depths of 2,000 meters. | ||
| BP DISPS: Diverless Flowline Tie-In, 1986/7/8/9 | ||
| Phase I evaluated available systems for diverless flowline tie-ins to BP's DISPS template resulting in the design concept of a modular system which could be configured for lateral deflection, direct pull-in, and vertical stab/hingeover tie-ins. Phase II involved the concept development of the passive alignment system extended to detailed design and full scale land testing of all modules. | ||
| Vancouver Island Gas Pipeline Marine Crossing, 1988-1991 | ||
| A 530 km gas transmission system was installed to bring natural gas to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The system includes crossings of the Strait of Georgia and Malaspina Strait. All crossings are dual 10.75-inch diameter pipe, with a total length of 92 km, in water depths of up to 425 m. At the time of installation, this was the world's second deepest pipeline installation. INTEC's involvement on this project was with the marine crossings, and ranged from preliminary design and cost studies, to detailed engineering and construction supervision. | ||
| Oryx Mississippi Canyon Subsea Development, 1992/3/4 | ||
| This fast-track project involved four subsea completions in 1355, 1697, 2088, and 2103 ft of water in the Mississippi Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico, with flexible flowlines and control umbilicals to the West Delta 152 platform, a distance of 4 to 7 miles. INTEC had responsibility for the detailed engineering, project services and construction management. First production (401/415 well) was achieved in less than one year from start of project. | ||
| Oman to India Gas Pipeline, 1994/5/6 | ||
| This 28-inch pipeline was designed to transport 1 BCF/day natural gas from Oman to India. The route of 900 miles traversed the Arabian Gulf in water depths to 11,500 ft making it the most advanced marine pipeline to date. In keeping with this requirement, a comprehensive program of testing, survey, and analysis was undertaken. A Technical Development Team was established in 1994 to define and implement the work necessary to establish technical feasibility. This team, headed by INTEC, conducted full scale collapse tests, welding trials, deep ocean corrosion tests and over 3,500 miles of swath surveys to validate the route, materials and installation methods. The work also prepared the framework for operations, including tests of candidate repair methods. Although this pipeline is not presently planned for installation, the technology needed to assure success of this or similar projects was developed during the course of this preparatory work. | ||
| Shell Mensa Subsea Satellite System, 1996/7 | ||
| Through the ongoing Partnership with Shell Deepwater Development Systems, Inc., INTEC helped design and implement Shell's record-breaking Mensa subsea satellite system, recently installed in the Gulf of Mexico. Mensa's three gas wells are situated in 5,300 ft water depth, and are over 60 miles away from their shallow water host processing platform. INTEC's initial roles in this endeavor were evaluations of key technical issues such as continuous subsea choking of high rate gas wells, chemical injection distribution methods, seals for deepwater external pressure, net pressure effects on tree blocks, and deepwater tree actuators. As the project evolved, INTEC continued in a Systems Engineering role to help with project schedule planning and monitoring, MMS documentation requirements, defining system functional requirements, component interface control, flow assurance, and subsea equipment installation and commissioning. | ||
| 1998 and Beyond | ||
| Fourteen (14) years after signing that first deepwater contract with Arco, INTEC is performing engineering for Petergaz on the Blue Stream Project which is a large diameter gas pipeline crossing of the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey in water depths of 2,000 meters; we are participating in a significant number of deepwater projects in the GOM involving subsea production, flowlines/pipelines and floating production, and our deepwater involvement in Brazil and West Africa is rapidly increasing. Yes, INTEC is in deepwater and will to continue to be, remaining at the forefront of deepwater technology development which will allow hydrocarbon energy, particularly natural gas, to be economically produced and transported long distances. | ||
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  Steve Huffer, Supervising Technical Specialist with 25 years experience, heads up INTEC's CAD/Drafting department His association with INTEC dates back to 1984 when he came in to assist us on our first job. He provided services to INTEC as a consultant until 1994 when he joined our staff. Steve has both coordinated and participated in the design and drafting of a wide variety of projects, and is responsible for hiring, training and supervising Design Drafting personnel and for establishing standards and procedures for the Design group. INTEC's project managers know that they can depend on Steve and his department to meet those all to frequent deadlines with quality drawings, even when it means working all weekend or all night!
About 28 years ago Steve and his wife, Priscilla, had their first child, Michelle. Then about 10 years ago, they decided it was time for another family and along came Amanda and two years later - Jessica. While Steve and Priscilla starting raising their second generation of children, Michelle presented them with the first of 3 grandsons.
Priscilla is a computer specialist and is very adept in training and troubleshooting. No longer working professionally, she does volunteer work for the Conroe School District.
Steve believes that Amanda will most likely be the child to follow in his footsteps, she has the analytical mind where Jessica is the creative one. Michelle, on the other hand, is a teacher and she has obtained a Master degree in Library Science.
It is hard to imagine that between work and kids Steve would have time for a hobby ..... but he does! He has completely reframed, rebricked, reroofed and redone his home. His pride though is in the cabinet work you find throughout the house. |
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Thanks go to Steve for always being here when we need you. Your work ethic and company loyalty are recognized and appreciated by us all.  New Projects
INTEC has been selected to provide flow assurance assistance to Mariner Energy for their Gulf of Mexico subsea developments. The first project is underway and others are expected to follow. We look forward to a long and productive future for this new relationship.
INTEC has been awarded a contract to assist Cameron with conceptual and preliminary design of a subsea system for Petrobras' RJS-396 development. The project will keep several engineers, designers, and draftsman busy for 4-5 months. We are hopeful that other subsea-support projects for Cameron will follow.
New Employees
There are several new faces in the Subsea/Flow Assurance group. New subsea engineers include Roy Flack (18 years experience) and Davinder Manku (7 years). New Flow Assurance engineers include Steve Cochran (7 years process, facilities, and flow assurance experience) and Ravi Gudimetla (returning to INTEC after earning his Master degree). Josh Terrell has joined us fresh out of A&M Galveston and is initially helping out with flow assurance analyses. All have settled in rapidly.
Ken MacKenzie reached his fifth anniversary with INTEC on January 9th. Ken has been at the helm of our tanker based FSO group in Kuala Lumpur, which has had considerable success under his leadership. Congratulations Ken!
Bill Beran officially marked his fifth anniversary with INTEC on February 1st. Bill spearheads INTEC's efforts in its Gulf of Mexico deepwater subsea partnership with Shell where technical challenges in incredible water depths are his daily diet! Congratulations Bill!
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In the sixth century BC Pythagoras founded a school of philosophy aimed at understanding and advancing the knowledge of numbers and other secrets of nature. He discovered "perfect numbers" which equal the sum of their divisors, and are also the sum of a series of consecutive whole numbers. The number 28 is such a perfect number (1+2+4+7+14, and 1+2+3+4+5+6+7), and the fact that this is also the orbit of the moon was considered significant. The Pythagorean Brotherhood also developed relationships between mathematics and other natural phenomena such a vibration of a string, and laid the foundation for a universal language needed to explain the phenomena around us. Pythagoras is best known to us, however, because of the theorem describing the relationship between the sides and the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle as x2+y2=z2, for which he developed a mathematical proof. For higher powers of this equation (xn+yn=zn where n>2) a solution could not so easily be found; in fact, a seventeenth century mathematician Pierre de Fermat claimed to have developed a proof that no such solutions existed. He wrote in the margin of his notes that he had insufficient space to write down the proof, so the question kept the mathematicians intrigued for over 300 years. Fermat also helped found probability theory and calculus, so he had the credibility to be taken seriously. A hundred years later, after the concept of imaginary numbers had been developed, Euler managed to prove Fermat's theorem for powers of 3 and 4. Since there is an infinite numbers of such equations, this hardly was a start. It took another hundred years, and the best minds of that century (particularly the French scientist Sophie Germain), |
to prove the theorem for n-5 and n=7 (n=6 being a case that can be reduced to lowerpreviously proved cases). At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, there had been no further progress, and a German industrialist offered a prize to anyone who could produce a general proof. The advent of computers in the forties led to attempts to use the brute force approach, but to no avail. Finally, a British mathematician named Andrew Wiles decided to make the solution of this enigma his life's goal. He combined elliptic equations, modular forms, and group theory (for the explanation of which I have unfortunately no room in the margin), and in May 1993 he triumphantly presented his result. Unfortunately a mistake was discovered, which took him another year and a half, and more mathematical acrobatics to fix, but finally, after 350 years, Fermat had been proven right. Along the way, Wiles developed new theorems and advanced the science of mathematics so that even without a successful outcome, his search would have been most useful, since he opened up new lines of attack on a whole host of other problems. The present educational system tends to focus on "successful" careers such as law, medicine and finance, and these are therefore risk-free choices. Philosophy and creative thinking is what truly advances our world and expands the mind, which gives us engineers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors and artists, all people who can visualize what they want to accomplish, and are not risk averse. The above story illustrates that taking such risks is crucial when venturing off the beaten path. "Doing it right the first time" is fine for something that has been done many times before, but real progress requires that we take the risk of doing it wrong, and learn from it.
W. J. Timmermans | |
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INTEC Welcomes the following New Employees to the Houston Office....
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The following employees were recently promoted to new positions. We appreciate their hard work and congratulate them on their success:
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| IN MEMORIAM
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| On February 10, 1998, Gurminder Manku unexpectedly died from heart failure, after successfully battling leukemia into remission over several months.
Many of his INTEC colleagues were able to pay their last respects and convey their heartfelt sympathy at a Visitation in Houston arranged and attended by all of Gurminder's immediate family members. In his short stay with INTEC, Gurminder was recognized, not only for his engineering capability, but also for his very unique brand of personal integrity. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him. |
| FLOATING PRODUCTION ACTIVITIES | ||
BROADER HORIZONS & GREATER DEPTHS INTEC continues to have involvement in a significant number of projects that involve conventional FPSOs and FSOs, as well as to focus on the challenges associated with the development of very deepwater projects. This has lead INTEC to focus on alternatives such as TLPs and SPARs.
Last year INTEC completed a North Sea Field Development Study for a water depth of 850 meters (2800 feet), with production rates of 400,000 BOPD and 540 Million SCFD of Gas, with both water injection and gas injection. Due to the very large production rates, complexities of the reservoir, and very high pressures, INTEC concluded that the field development should include both a very large TLP and a 400,000 dwt FPSO equipped with 2.8 Million Barrels of onboard storage.
INTEC also completed an evaluation of a MINI-SPAR that could be utilized as a wellhead platform for the economical production of small fields in a water depth of 930 meters (3,050 feet). The main column of the SPAR was 34 feet in diameter, with an overall length of 443 feet, and an allowable weight of 1500 short tons for the topside facilities. That Mini-SPAR had good motion characteristics and the other advantages of a SPAR, but can be built and installed at relatively low costs.
Bob Jones is working full time in the TEXACO offices as a part of the FSO project team. Invitations To Tender have been issued to pre-qualified bidders for a permanent bow turret mooring system, with bids due later this year. INTEC now has a small core of personnel with significant experience in the analyses and design of SPARs, and anticipates a rapidly increasing role in this merging technology and the enhancement of the current state of the art. The following is an update on current INTEC projects involving Floating Production Systems: |
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READING & BATES DEVELOPMENT COMPANY; LOW COST FPSO FOR GULF OF MEXICO INTEC completed the study of ways to develop an inexpensive FPSO that can produce marginal fields economically in water depths up to 5,000 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. The focus of the study was to use innovative thinking to adapt proven technology so that CAPEX costs would be reduced without inordinate risks. One option included a SPAR buoy to support steel catenary risers
LEVIATHAN GAS PIPELINE COMPANY; SPAR SENSITIVITY STUDIES
VANCO ENERGY COMPANY; MANTA FIELD SPAR, OFFSHORE GABON
READING & BATES DEVELOPMENT COMPANY; SPAR
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| PIPELINE UPDATE |
INTEC is currently working on several deepwater and long distance pipeline projects. And also on three offshore projects in Alaska. This work has placed INTEC at the forefront of the pipeline consultancy league, and is proof of the client's appreciation of the added value we provide.
The two largest pipeline projects are still the NorthStar/Liberty development project in Alaska for BP, and the Zafiro development in Equatorial Guinea for Mobil. Coming a close third is the Diana deepwater and shallow water pipelines project for Exxon. This work includes the design of Steel Catenary Risers and export pipelines at 5,000 ft of water, an 85 mile long gas pipeline, and a 160 mile long oil pipeline to shore.
The Amoco King/King's Peak development will also entail the design of Steel Catenary Risers for insulated, uninsulated and injection flowlines, and two export pipelines, engineering, at 6,000 ft. The total length of pipelines and flowlines is approximately 100 miles. INTEC is working on this project as Heerema's' engineering subcontractor, cementing an already sound relationship built on the Black Sea Blue Stream project.
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| MARINE TERMINALS PROJECTS | ||
Although this issue of the INTEC Quarterly Journal emphasizes our prominence in deepwater pipelines, the company has also reached a peak of activity in shallow waters around the World with a record number of active marine terminal projects, including SPMs, CBMs and fixed berth work.
Bert Schultz, one of the four company founders, brought his marine terminals experience to INTEC together with pipelines (no FPSO/FSO, subsea and facilities engineering groups back then in '84...) and won the company's first marine terminal projects in the 80's. Activity picked up in the early 90's, most notably with a succession of Single Point Mooring (SPM) projects for Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC) in Taiwan, for both crude oil and refined products, with one crude import terminal featuring a 56-inch diameter pipeline. INTEC handled the projects for CPC from the conceptual stage through survey, design, the construction bidding process and construction supervision and management.
The next large terminal project in which INTEC played a major role was for Caltex for their SPM terminal facility, shared with Shell, at the Rayong refineries sites on the Gulf of Thailand. This was another sizable facility with 19.5 km of 48-inch offshore pipeline and a CALM buoy for 280,000 dwt tankers. INTEC worked closely with Caltex from the conceptual stage through engineering and construction.
Although all the previously won projects had been for the oil industry, in 1994 INTEC was selected by the Turkish governmental authorities as their consultant for two SPM terminals to be built on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey for exporting water, a valuable commodity in some of the countries on the Mediterranean coast. The project was to export the excess of fresh water that emanates from snow-melt in the mountains of central Turkey and flows, almost unhindered, into the Mediterranean Sea. The Manavgat River water however, is now to be captured and treated near the ancient coastal city of Side, and is to be exported via two SPM CALM buoys, each fed by two 48-inch pipelines, to other countries around the Mediterranean. This project is currently under construction with the participation of an INTEC team resident in Turkey.
A number of INTEC's construction supervision staff are at present on this and other SPM terminal projects around the World. At Dabhol in India, INTEC is the specialized marine consultant on the ongoing installation work for an SPM fuel oil import terminal for a major power station being built at a coastal site 200 km south of Mumbai (Bombay for the old school....). |
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Another INTEC group is busy with the construction of the Malacca terminal on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, for Malaysian Refining Corporation. This is a crude oil import terminal scheduled for start-up in mid '98.
Engineering is still in progress on two other Far East terminals in INTEC's Kuala Lumpur office. One is for a crude oil import terminal on the north coast of Java, Indonesia at Balongan, where Pertamina is the owner, and the other is at Port Dickson, Malaysia where Cabot is the client.
Other recently completed field work was on another power station fuel oil import terminal in Ghana, West Africa. The Houston engineering office is presently busy on a further West Africa project, which is still in the relatively early stages, for Mobil, on their Zafiro field in Equatorial Guinea. This SPM in 140 meters of water for 300,000 dwt tankers will provide for crude oil export from the field's storage tanker, the 'Zafiro Producer.'
To add to this geographical diversity, INTEC is increasingly active in Latin America where engineering was completed last year on two SPM crude oil export terminals in the Patagonia region of Argentina for Termap S.A., a company formed by the regional onshore oil-producing companies.
Not all terminals are SPMs or are as big as some of the above projects. A number of smaller facilities of the Conventional Buoy Mooring (CBM) type and some fixed berth projects have been completed in the past few years or are currently in progress.
INTEC completed work on a CBM fuel oil import terminal for a Coastal Corporation company at Acajutla, El Salvador, providing survey management, design engineering, procurement and construction services. Similar services were provided on another fuel oil import CBM facility at Old Harbour, Jamaica in support of the nation's power generation facility expansion projects, and work has just commenced on a further project to increase fuel oil import capacity to Old Harbour.
Another area of interest INTEC has is in rehabilitation of existing terminal facilities. Work is ongoing on marine terminal pipeline replacement projects at two Latin American locations for a major oil company, where lines that have been in service for a long period of time need replacing due to internal corrosion or external damage. Consulting work is also on the increase on the rehabilitation of fixed berth facilities with work in progress or completed in the U.S. and Latin America, further expanding INTEC's Marine Terminal group's horizons both technically and geographically.
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| NEW AWARDS THIS PAST QUARTER INCLUDE: | ||
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 For Alliance Engineering, Nomeco Masseko Project
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For Marathon Upstream Sakhalin Services, Ltd.,, Sakhalin II FSO - Phase 2
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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 |
Kim Clarke - Senior Designer