Angola’s economy has grown rapidly over the last few years, which is attributed to the ongoing oil boom in the sub-Saharan African country. Approximately 90 percent of Angola's government revenues come from the sale of oil, while earnings from diamond exports make up around seven percent.

 

 

 

 

Angola's economy has grown rapidly over the last few years, which is attributed to the ongoing oil boom in the sub-Saharan African country. Approximately 90 percent of Angola's government revenues come from the sale of oil, while earnings from diamond exports make up around seven percent.
Since the mid-1990s offshore Angola has been a world class exploration province and recent deep water discoveries have been among the world's largest finds.

I view of the huge projects incoming in Angola especially in the Deep Water field, Socotherm Group decided to establish a local subsidiary able to supply the pipe coating, the pipe insulation and the concrete weight coating services the to Oil & Gas Industry.

Socotherm Angola Ltda has been established in the Luanda Port area in late Q5 and will be in operation on H2 06. In the meantime the pipe coating and insulation works of the two most important Angolan projects, the "Greater Plutonio" of BP and the "BBLT" of Chevron Texaco, have been performed respectively in Brasil at the Ubu Marine Base of Socotherm Brasil and in Argentina at the Escobar plant of Socotherm Americas (ex Socoril).

 

The BBLT Project

Located in Angola's block 14, Benguela Belize-Lobito Tomboco is a four-field, $2,2 billion crude oil and natural gas project in which Chevron has 31 percent interest. With first oil expected in early 2006, production is estimated to exceed 245.000 barrels per day of crude oil by 2009. Deepwater Subsea wells will produce to a 512 meter tall production platform called a compliant tower, marking the first application of the technology outside the US Gulf Of Mexico. It is the fifth-tallest free-standing structure in the world.

Benguela Belize-Lobito Tomboco is the second major development in the highly prolific Block 14, which has yielded nine discoveries to date. The Kuito Field development, which began production in late 1999 -30 months after discovery- is Angola's first deepwater producer.

The BBLT reservoirs are located 80 km offshore Angola, Subsea at more than 381 mt. Plans are to combine the Benguela-Belize integrated Drilling and Production Platform (DPP) hub facility, supported by a Compliant Piled Tower (CPT), with tieback to the Lobito-Tomboco sub-sea wells, enabling the phased development of the BBLT reserve base.
CABGOC (Cabinda Gulf Oil Co.), headquartered in Luanda, Angola, is the Operator of the Block 14 Contractor Group, which is comprised of: Cabinda Gulf Oil Co. Ltd. (31 percent), Agip Angola Exploration B.V. (20 percent), Sonangol Pesquisa & Producao, S.A.R.L. (20 percent), TotalFinaElf Exploration & Production, Angola (20 percent) and Galp-Exploracao e Producao Petrolifera, LDA (9 percent).

 

Technical features:

• Block 14 is situated within the Lower Congo Basin, offshore Angola. It covers 4,000 square kilometers, in water depths extending from 200 to 2,000 mts.

• There have been nine discoveries in Block 14 since 1997: Kuito (1997), Benguela (1998), Belize (1998), Landana (1998), Lobito (2000), Tomboco (2000), Tombua (2001), Gabela (2002), Negage (2002).

• Kuito Field, which was discovered in 1997, began the first phase of production on Dec. 15, 1999. Kuito has produced nearly 69 million barrels from a deepwater environment in only five years from field discovery, which is a remarkable achievement. The short cycle time from discovery to first oil (only 30 months) was unprecedented in the industry for a development of Kuito's magnitude.

• Compliant Piled Towers are bottom-founded (attached by piles driven into the substrate), offshore structures designed for cost-effective development in deepwater environments, typically in water depths ranging from 300 to 900 meters. Compliant Piled Towers provide bottom-founded developments in these water depths at costs appreciably less than conventional structures due to reduced steel requirements. The Towers are compliant (flexible) as they are able to mitigate the changing wind, wave and current conditions around the facility.

 

The combined contract awards are valued at more than $820 million. The contract to DSME is worth more than $700 million for the engineering, procurement, construction and installation of the production facilities, Compliant Piled Tower and the gas and oil export pipelines.
The Lobito-Tomboco project has involved 50 km of pipes installed at deep water Angola's block 14. The coating operations were performed at SOCOTHERM Americas facilities located in Escobar, Argentina during 2005 and beginning of 2006. Lobito-Tomboco linepipe, manufactured in Italy, were supplied by Tenaris-Dalmine.

TenarisDalmine is the name used by the steel pipe operations of Tenaris in Italy centered on the Dalmine seamless pipe mill located in Dalmine, Bergamo. With an annual production capacity of 950,000 tons of seamless tubes and a workforce of more than 3,000 employees, TenarisDalmine is a leading European manufacturer and supplier of high quality seamless pipes for the energy, automotive and mechanical industries.
The 11500 tons of X-65 Sour Service steel were brought from Italy by vessel and the coating operations took 7 months to be completed. Both 8 inches and 10 inches pipes were fully coated with anticorrosion and thermal insulation coating based on foam polypropylene materials.

SCOPE OF WORK

SOCOTHERM Americas scope of work for the LT project consisted in the provision of anticorrosion and thermal insulation coating for TEST and PRODUCTION flow lines, as follows:

TEST pipe line
Pipe OD 8.625 in (219.10 mm) - Pipe Wall Thickness 15.90 mm
Steel grade: X65 Sour Service
Pipe quantity: 19.154 meters

PRODUCTION pipe line
Pipe OD 10.75 in (273.10 mm) - Pipe Wall Thickness 15.90 mm
Steel grade: X65 Sour Service
Pipe quantity: 32.001 meters

Test and production flowlines were insulated with the driving criteria being the cooldown time prior to blowdown to prevent the formation of hydrates, which indicates the high performance of the coating and the demanding conditions that were required.

During the years 2003 and 2004 SOCOTHERM Americas engineering team was focused on the full scale qualification trials for the project. SOCOTHERM Americas and Subsea 7, one of the major laying contractors in the oil industry and the responsible for the Lobito-Tomboco welding and laying operations, combined efforts during the trials stage prior to the start up of coating operations. The pre-qualification trials were carried out at SOCOTHERM Americas facilities in Argentina and the full process was thoroughly controlled by Subsea 7 engineering team.

One of the most critical test is the full scale bending. Using full scale coated pipes, subjected to strain excursions representative of pipe reeling and straightening during installation, the influence of reeling strains in fatigue are assessed.

This trial was essential for the pipe laying process since Subsea 7 was planning to use the Skandi-Navica vessel

.
Skandi-Navica is one of the most advanced reeled pipelay vessels in the industry, capable or reeling rigid pipe up to 16 in diameter.

Immediately after the coating process finished the pipes were transported to One Sonils Base in Angola for welding and installation.

The latest news is that Benguela-Belize-Lobito-Tomboco project, located offshore Angola, has come on stream. The initial oil production rate was 10,000 bbls/d (gross) and this will rise to reach a peak rate of over 200,000 bbls/day.

 

(Source: www.eni.it)