Published: 2001 | The Journal of Offshore Technology
“Unbonded Flexible Pipe is a viable cost effective solution for the transportation of hydrocarbons from Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels to CALM Buoys for tanker transport to shore” – Justin Tuohy, Director, Product Strategy for Wellstream.
OFFSHORE EXPLORATION for oil and gas is being performed in even more challenging waters, with fields being developed in water depths of 2000 metres and greater. To recover hydrocarbons from these depths a number of technical challenges are presented to the designers of riser and offloading systems. Since unbonded flexible risers are an obvious solution for floating production and storage systems, being a proven technology spanning three decades, these challenges have already been overcome for the smaller diameter pipe structures. In 1999 Wellstream illustrated the technology lead by being the first manufacturer of flexible pipe to qualify 4-inch and 6-inch internal diameter products to 2000 m water depth for offshore Brazil. Continued developments will have much larger internal diameters qualified to these water depths in the near future………
Justin Tuohy | @pen 