Over a three year period Pioneer Natural Resources is spending about $500 million to drill 40-60 wells from the six acre island in Harrison Bay to access an estimated 50 to 90 million barrels of reserves from its Oooguruk oil development project in the Beaufort Sea.
First oil is scheduled for early 2008; by 2010 oil production is anticipated to peak at 15,000-20,000b/d.
Relatively small the reservoir may be, but the Oooguruk project comes with a $500 million development price tag, reflecting the difficult environmental conditions and operational logistics that accompany the territory on the North Slope, located 400km north of the Arctic Circle.
Pioneer’s Oooguruk oil pipeline will be the second export pipeline ever installed offshore Arctic and will be buried in a trench to protect against sea ice.
The Oooguruk line is actually two pipelines in one with the main line wrapped in a protective outer shell that would contain leaks from the primary line. The entire line will then be wrapped in insulation to keep heat from the oil from melting the surrounding permafrost.
The Oooguruk pipeline bundle is designed as an 'open' bundle, where individual pipes are strapped together, rather than enclosed in a single large pipe. The open bundle consists of four pipelines, measuring overall around a meter wide and 0.6m high. Spacers, 250mm wide and located at 6m intervals, package and separate the pipelines and facilitate pipe flexibility to avoid buckling.
Anchorage-based HC Price Construction will complete the Oooguruk pipeline installation in April 2007. The bundle will be installed in a 2.7m deep excavated trench in the seabed, giving almost 2m of cover over the top of the pipe, designed to prevent upward movement of the pipeline and buckling during flowline operation.
The structural design of the pipeline also averts buckling during production start-up when thermal and pressure expansion impact the pipeline.
The subsea section of the pipeline will be 9km long, while the onshore portion is 3.7km long, built on vertical support members above ground, routed to the onshore tie-in pad which contains power generation, separation, compression, metering and other support utilities.
SOCOTHERM GROUP and the Oooguruk Project
Socotherm Americas, the Argentinean subsidiary of Socotherm S.p.a. listed on STAR High Requirements Segment of the Italian Stock Exchange and one of the leading companies in the field of pipe coating and insulation for energy transportation, has been awarded a part of the Oooguruk subsea section of pipeline
Socotherm Americas has a great deal of experience in the application of thermal insulation in both onshore and offshore steel pipelines.
With almost 15 years of own experience and Socotherm’s over 30 years thermal insulation experience, Socotherm Americas counts on with the acknowledgement of the most important Oil Companies all over the world. Its capability of affording effective solutions to the different needs of the clients is backed by more than 1.000 Km of insulated pipelines in the main production areas of the world.
In order to provide a solution suitable to comply with Project’s technical needs and treacherous environmental conditions, Socotherm Americas has studied a tailored integrated solution that will provide to the market, additional economical benefits derived from its lower cost.
Due to the extreme environment inherent in Alaska (temperatures up to -45 ºC with freezing winds approaching -70 ºC, soil stresses because of the strong temperature changes, etc), different but integrated and compatible solutions had to be provided for the same pipeline.
Water injection needed three different solutions: Anticorrosion protection -both active and passive- to avoid pipeline corrosion, Thermal Insulation in order not to melt the surrounding frozen environment and mechanical protection to avoid both pipeline and coating damage.
Passive anticorrosion protection was obtained through Fusion Bonded Epoxy application over the 8” bare pipeline. On the other hand, active anticorrosion protection was achieved with the installation of sacrificial anodes over the Thermal Insulation protection, consisting in 2” of PU Foam injected between FBE already coated pipe and an outer High Density Polyethylene jacket.
With a 100 - 120 Kg/m3 density, a thermal conductivity of 0,04 W/m.K was obtained which was required to reach the Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient (OHTC or U-value) needed.
Last but not least, one inch of Concrete Weight Coating was applied by side extrusion over the HDPE jacket (with an extruded HDPE lace to improve adhesion between jacket and concrete), and mechanical protection was guaranteed.
Full compatibility between the different layers for anticorrosion, thermal and mechani