Types and designs of offshore platforms in the Caspian. Offshore oil platform. Surface drilling platforms

We are making this publication for those who have always been interested in how an offshore drilling platform is arranged and how this miracle of engineering works.

    Types of offshore platforms:

  • stationary oil platform;

  • offshore oil platform, loosely fixed to the bottom;
  • semi-submersible oil drilling platform;



  • mobile offshore platform with retractable supports;



  • drilling ship;



  • floating oil storage (FSO) - a floating oil storage facility capable of storing oil or storing and shipping onshore;



  • a floating production, storage and offloading installation (FPSO) - a floating structure capable of storing, shipping and producing oil;



  • oil platform with stretched legs (floating base with tension vertical anchoring).
    •

The four main components of the oil platform: hull, drilling deck, anchor system and drilling rig - allow you to solve tasks for exploration and production of black gold in high water conditions.

The hull is essentially a pontoon with a triangular or quadrangular base supported by huge columns. Above the hull is a drilling deck that can support hundreds of tons of drill pipe, several cranes and a full-size helipad... Above the drilling deck, there is a drilling rig, the task of which is to lower / raise the drill to the seabed. At sea, the entire structure is held in place by an anchor system. Several winches pull tight the steel mooring lines anchored to the ocean floor and hold the platform in place.


Principle of operation

The oil production process begins with seismic exploration. At sea, seismic exploration is carried out with the help of special ships, usually with a displacement of up to 3,000 tons. Such vessels unwind seismic streamers behind them, on which hydrophones (receivers) are located and create acoustic waves using a source of oscillations (pneumatic cannons). Shock acoustic waves are reflected from the layers of the earth, and, returning to the surface, are captured by hydrophones. This data creates 2D and 3D seismic maps showing potential hydrocarbon reservoirs. However, no one can guarantee that he has found oil until it gushes out of the well.

So, after exploration, the drilling process begins. For drilling, the team assembles the drill in sections. Each section is 28 meters high and consists of iron pipes. For example, the EVA-4000 oil platform is capable of connecting a maximum of 300 sections, which allows you to go deep into the earth's crust for 9.5 km. Sixty sections per hour, the drill is being lowered at that speed. After drilling, the drill is pulled out to seal the well to prevent oil from leaking out into the sea. To do this, blowout equipment or a preventer is lowered to the bottom, thanks to which not a single substance will leave the well. A preventer with a height of 15 m and a weight of 27 tons is equipped with control equipment. It acts like a huge bushing and is capable of shutting off the oil flow in 15 seconds.


When oil is found, the oil platform can be moved to another location to find oil, and a floating production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) arrives in its place, which will pump oil from the Earth and send it to refineries onshore.

An oil platform can remain anchored for decades, regardless of any surprises from the sea. Its task is to extract oil and natural gas from the depths of the seabed, separating pollutants and sending oil and gas ashore.

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Workers and personnel travel to the village of Nogliki, a stronghold of SE in the north of Sakhalin, by train, in the company's private carriage. An ordinary compartment car is nothing special, though a little cleaner than usual.

Each passenger is given the following lunch box:

Upon arrival in Nogliki, a supervisor meets everyone and decides what to do next - either a temporary camp, or an airport - by helicopter, or (if the weather is not flying) by a boat. We were sent straight to the airport. To fly by helicopter, it is imperative that you complete a helicopter rescue course (HUET) in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in advance. At this training, you are put on special thermal suits equipped with a respiratory system and turned upside down in the pool, in a simulated helicopter cockpit, but that's another story again ...

At the airport, everyone undergoes body search (including dog handlers)

Pre-flight briefing describing the situation if the helicopter does crash and donning rescue suits.

The suits are terribly uncomfortable, but if the helicopter crashes, they can keep you afloat and keep your body warm until the rescuers arrive. True, if you get out of a sinking helicopter in this suit ...

The platform is located 160-180 km from Noglik. The helicopter overcomes this distance in 50-60 minutes, flying all the time along the coast to minimize the risk of falling into the water, and flying another platform of the Sakhalin-2 project, Molikpaq, along the way.
After landing on the helipad, you go down to the introductory briefing room:

All! Now you are on an offshore oil platform, a piece of land in the sea, and this fact cannot be avoided.

How to work here?

The PA-B platform operates around the clock and life does not stop here for a second. 12-hour day shift and 12-hour night shift.

I worked during the day, although someone says that the night is quieter and there is no hectic day. All this, of course, delays and after a couple of days you already feel like a cog in a huge mechanism, and an even better comparison is like an ant in an anthill. The worker ant woke up at 6 in the morning, had breakfast with what the ant cook had prepared, took the work order from the ant supervisor and went to work until the evening, until the replacement ant came to replace ... At the same time, it’s like- then everything unites.

After 3 days, I already knew almost everyone by sight ...

And I felt as if we were all part of one whole, practically relatives.

But the platform employs 140 people (this is the number that should be on the platform and none more so that the life sloops "alpha", "betta" and "gamma" could evacuate everyone. That is why we were transferred for a couple of days to spend the night on the ship). It was a strange sensation ... it was all like one continuous day.

I woke up, went to the dining room, greeted the man from the night shift, for whom it was supper, he went to bed, and in the evening we met again in the dining room, only he was already having breakfast, and I was having supper. For him it was already a different day, but for me it was the same! And so over and over ... a vicious circle. So day after day, night after night, a week passed.

How to live here?

In principle, the platform has all the conditions for a comfortable stay and free time. All conditions have been created here so that a person does not bother himself with everyday problems, but gives himself completely 2 classes - work and rest.
After you have been assigned to the cabin, you can be sure that upon arrival you will have a bed with a freshly filled bed linenwhich changes every few days. Cabins are cleaned and vacuumed regularly. They are of 2 types: "2 + 2" and "2". Accordingly, for 4 people and for two.

As a rule, half of the residents work during the day shift, the rest at night, so as not to interfere with each other. The decor is spartan - minimal furniture due to the lack of free space, but everything is very ergonomic and efficient. There is a shower and toilet next to each room.

Dirty things are washed in the laundry.

Upon check-in, you will be given a mesh bag with your cabin number written on it. Then you put your dirty linen into it, and then just bring it to the laundry and after a few hours you will find a fragrant fresh and ironed linen.

Work overalls are washed separately in special solutions - household chemicals do not wash oil and other related delights.
On each floor of the residential module there is a point with free wifi (of course all social networks locked). There is also a computer class - 4 computers for general Internet access and other needs. They are usually used by laundresses to play solitaire.

There is also a small gym (quite good by the way):

Billiards:

Table tennis:

Cinema hall:

(the dudes have attached a playstation to the projector and hack at lunch in the race) in which in the evening they show something from the freshly updated DVD collection.

A few words about the canteen ...

She is Ph.D.G.G.G.E.N.A. During my week on the platform, I got 3 kege.

This is due to the fact that everything is very tasty, unlimited and free \u003d)

During the week I don’t remember that the menu was repeated, but on the day of the oil worker it’s just a feast for the belly: a bunch of shrimp, scallop and baltika "zero" with batteries!

Smoking on the platform is only allowed in strictly defined places.

Moreover, in each such room there is a built-in electric lighter, since it is forbidden to use lighters and matches.

It seems that they cannot be transported and they will be confiscated at the Noglik airport. It is also forbidden to use cell phones, but except for the residential module and only as an alarm clock. And in order to photograph anything outside the residential unit, you will have to write out a special outfit, undergo gas permit training and take a gas analyzer with you.

As I mentioned, the first few days we lived on the support ship "Smit Sibu" due to the limited number of people on board due to the limited number of places in lifeboats in case of emergency evacuation.

"Smit Sibu" runs constantly from Molikpaq to PA-B in case emergency... The "frog" device is used for loading onto the ship:

This thing really looks like a frog - a non-sinking cabin, with an iron base and seats inside. Before each transfer, you will again need to put on your life suits.

Frog is hooked on by a crane and dragged onto the ship. The sensations are quite sharp when you are lifted to the height of the 9th floor in an open cockpit swaying in the wind and then lowered on board in the same way. The first time I couldn’t resist a cry of delight from this free "attraction".

Unfortunately, in the area of \u200b\u200b500 meters from the platform, it is strictly forbidden to take pictures - the security zone, and I don't have pictures from the frog "but I don't have a view of the platform. There was nothing particularly interesting on the ship - it didn’t shake much, for breakfast we were fed fresh caviar, boiled eggs and macaroni and cheese, and the sockets are everywhere at 120 volts and are flat like in Japan. There was always a feeling that you were visiting, in someone else's house. Maybe the crew created such a mood ...

In the evening, the only entertainment was to walk on the upper deck and watch movies.

For the first time I saw a sunset on Sakhalin from the sea, when the sun goes beyond the island.

And at night they came very close to Molikpak. Millions of seagulls circled around, and the torch was firing at full power - the pressure must have been relieved. I managed to click a piece of the platform from the porthole:

Well, in the morning I again had to put on life suits, climb into the "frog" and back to the platform.

In one of the last days, I managed to get permission to take photos on the helipad

And on the upper deck. Flare system with pilot burner:

Many people ask why so much associated gas is burned through the torch, because it can be used for various purposes! First, not a lot, but a small part. And secondly, do you know why? So that in case emergency the gas could be safely depressurized through the flare system, burned out and an explosion avoided.

And this is a drilling module. It is from it that the drilling process is conducted, you see how hefty!

The helicopter, picking up personnel, comes in for landing:

The scheduled loading of passengers flying to Nogliki is in progress:

The way back home seemed much faster and shorter. Everything was exactly the same, only in reverse order. Helicopter-train-Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ...

DRILLING PLATFORM, a hydraulic structure for drilling wells in the development of offshore oil and gas fields. Depending on the design and purpose, there are offshore fixed platforms (for production drilling) and floating drilling rigs (for exploration drilling).

Offshore fixed platforms, mainly three-tiered, are used at depths of up to 350 m for simultaneous drilling, production and preparation of reservoir products for transportation. Platforms designed only for drilling oil or gas wells are made in a single-tier design. From the deck of the drilling platform, which is at a height inaccessible to waves, one or two drilling rigs can construct several dozen vertical, inclined, horizontal and branched (multilateral) wells. Stationary drilling platforms are fixed on the seabed in the following ways: by pile (driving into the seabed of piles, rigidly fastened to the support block of the drilling platform); gravitational (held at the bottom due to the mass of the structure, while the support block is filled with soil or water to reliably sink to the seabed); combined, or pile-gravity (a flooded support array located at the bottom is additionally fixed with piles along the entire perimeter); using anchor chains or tension ropes (if the drilling platform support block is made of pontoons completely or partially submerged in water). The supporting block of the drilling platform is made of steel (mainly tubular), reinforced concrete or combined (reinforced concrete gravity lower part, upper - steel lattice structure). The topside part of the drilling platform includes the main complexes: drilling, operational, power, residential and life support. In the waters of the Arctic seas, ice-resistant drilling platforms with supports in the form of a cylinder, prism or cone are used to reduce the ice load.

Floating drilling rigs are subdivided into submersible (PBU), self-lifting (jack-up), semi-submersible (PPDR) and drilling ships (BS).

MODUs are designed for drilling wells in shallow water in the depth range from 2 to 20 m (some up to 50 m). All MODUs have an underwater hull (flooded pontoon), on which the support columns are supported. To lift the PBU from the bottom, a soil erosion system under the bottom is used to reduce the suction forces.

Exploratory drilling is carried out from the jack-up rig at depths from 5 to 150 m. The jack-up rig consists of a displacement hull (pontoon), support columns (from 3 to 6), lifting mechanisms and an oil rig. The building has premises for various purposes - for placing equipment, storage, living quarters. When transporting the jack-up rig, the support columns are maximally extended upwards. At the drilling point, the columns are lowered to the ground, the body is lifted out of the water using a hydraulic or electromechanical lift, and the lower part of the columns, equipped with special shoes, is pressed into the ground.

SSDR and BS are used at sea depths of 150-1500 m. SSDR stability is ensured by the shape of the pontoon hull, the distance between the pontoons, as well as the number and diameter of the supporting columns on which the topside is installed. PPDR and BS are fixed at the drilling point using anchor systems or by providing dynamic positioning, carried out by special propellers built into the hull of a pontoon submerged in water. BS, unlike other types of floating drilling rigs, retain the high seaworthiness characteristic of ordinary ships.

Lit .: Vyakhirev R.I., Nikitin B.A., Mirzoev D.I. Construction and development of offshore oil and gas fields. M., 2001.

For the extraction of minerals, it is necessary to use special engineering structures that will provide the necessary conditions for the development. Moreover, the complexity of such objects will depend on the depth of occurrence of raw materials and related factors.

The drilling platform is used to develop oil and gas fields, which are usually located at great depths and are characterized by difficult production conditions. But the value of these resources and their high strategic importance have led to the fact that even the most complex deposits are subject to development.

Onshore drilling platforms

As you know, oil can occur not only on land, but also in a continental plume surrounded by water. Therefore, some platforms have to be equipped with additional elements that would allow them to stay on the water. Fortunately, such metamorphoses do not occur with land objects, so the procedure for their installation will be much easier.

The rig platform is a monolithic permanent structure that serves as a support for all other elements. The process of its installation is carried out in several stages, which can be characterized as follows:

  • ... Drilling a test well for the purpose of field exploration. It will be expedient to develop only the most promising zones.
  • ... Next, prepare the site for the platform. To do this, they try to level the surrounding area as much as possible so that nothing interferes with the installation.
  • ... After that, the foundation is poured, although sometimes they just get by with the installation of supports, if the total weight of the tower makes it possible to do without capital construction.
  • ... When the base is ready, the drill tower and all other elements that are involved in the direct production process are assembled on top of it.
  • ... At the final stage, testing and commissioning are carried out.

As in any business, in the equipment of stationary drilling platforms, you must first of all take care of safety. Failure to comply with this condition will entail the most serious consequences. Incorrect calculations can lead to the destruction of the object. In addition to high costs, it can also cause injury or death. If any of the personnel is injured, then the person responsible for the construction will be prosecuted.

Loads acting on drilling platforms can be classified as follows:

  • ... Constants, which include forces that act throughout the entire period of operation. This is primarily the mass of all metal structures located above the platform. When carrying out calculations, only this parameter is mainly used. For marine elements, water resistance is still relevant.
  • ... Temporary, which are valid only under certain conditions. This is a vibration that appears only during the start-up of the drilling rig.

Surface drilling platforms

Offshore drilling platforms, due to the peculiarities of their operation, must have a special design that will allow them to stay on the water. As a rule, such types of special equipment are floating barges that can produce oil and immediately pump it into their tanks. After filling one vessel, a change is made, and the process is repeated again. This is very convenient from a practical point of view, but in case of careless work, it can lead to the ingress of oil into the water.

The floating drilling platform can operate at depths from 2 to 150 meters, so that different types designed to work in different conditions. Some barges are miniature and can operate in rivers where maneuvering space is very limited. And their larger "brothers" are intended already for work in the open sea, where there is a place for any size to turn around. Their use will be much more profitable, since at one time you can pump out a large amount of resource at once in order to save on transport costs, which have to be borne every time on the way to the port and back.

Typically, a drilling platform spends only a few days at sea, after which it needs to return to base to empty the reservoirs. The number of water sources for production is strongly limited by the severity of the occurrence conditions, therefore they are resorted to only in the case of really huge reserves or high Quality product. Although, in the future, this industry will come to the fore when supplies on land run out.

Varieties of platforms

Russian drilling platforms are represented by both types. For the country, oil is of the utmost importance, therefore its production is regulated by state level and is calculated in the most careful way. It was recently planned to double all platforms currently available within 15 years, but the economic crisis put an end to these plans. Now new towers will appear in a very limited number.

If you are interested in photos of the drilling platform, then you should look at them on the Internet. Descriptions of the most common models can also be useful:

  • ... a semi-submersible drilling platform can produce oil from a depth of 10 kilometers with a maximum water layer of 3 kilometers;
  • ... the jack-up drilling platform operates at a depth of 6.5 kilometers, but the water thickness cannot be more than 30 meters;
  • ... the drilling platform the vessel operates at shallow depths, when oil lies practically on the surface of the continental plume.

All other varieties can be read on the manufacturers' websites.