Member Info for adoubleuk

Wellwell,

"Page 32 "The world’s largest disconnectable turret enables the FPSO to weathervane
in normal conditions and tobe disconnected from the buoy upon the approach of a hurricane. The turret can be reconnected rapidly once calm weather returns, minimizing the loss of production."

OK. Great. Effin lovely. But nowt to do with 'us'.

This BB seems to have suddenly become swamped with links to marketing brochures.

Which doubtless being of no interest to many PI's is maybe a sign that some companies are becoming aware of Hurricane's existance, and are trolling their wares for a bit of the action... at last.

Hecate (plus your sisters, familiars, and whoever else),

I thought I saw a post from you about 'insane music'.

But it seems to have disappeared, from my computer screen, at least.

But I'd like to sumit a links to some 'sane music', nevertheless, just in case it works...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEU0_Mqor2k

Lady Wellwell,

"This should help understand how the buoy will be connected."

You create lovely cartoons.

Please make some more showing how easy everything is.

topteam,

"The mooring lines are the same as the mooring lines on a Semi Submersible rig. So will be more than capable of holding the vessel in relative position without using the Thrusters. If the weather was going to be out of the mooring line safety limits they would un latch and head for shelter. "

I politely suggest you go read up on this thing. 'DYOR' as the saying goes. Because posting nonsense such as you just have is simply making a fool of yourself. This BB might sometimes get argumentative, such as today's spat between myself and 'Wellwell', which ain't the first, and almost certainly not the last. But at least there's a certain mutual respect, because I know what I'm talking about when he doesn't. But your own head is self-evidently empty.

Hi, 'topteam' newbie.

"Sharp end of oil patch sounds like you have never been to sea...."

Hmmm. Thinks...

N.Sea. Adriatic. Red Sea. Persian Gulf. Persian Gulf again! Lovely long jackup tow Ravenna-to-Djerba across the med, with all of us playing cards in the messhall in the evening if conditions permitted. Gulf of Guinea (more than once, including tows). Offshore Congo, getting to which platform involved riding on the most horrible 'corkskrewy' boat ever, designed by Italians who ought to be shot for that. Offshore Cameroon a lot of times. Offshore Bénin, including me being interviewed by the national TV alongside the Energy Minister. Oh yeah, the Aegean, as well, with (daily) transport to the platform by boat.

Do you now want my 'onshore' rig CV as well? Though in Gabon some of it involved lengthy riverboat transport, and getting to the wellsite in Laos required taking a ferry across the Mekong.

Yep, I'm a real landlubber, me.

Wellwell,

"AK.....close enough to an admission I suppose!"

Oscar Wilde, on an encounter with Customs Officials when arriving in America: "I have nothing to declare but my genius".

" Good luck with your online poker..."

Thank you. But what's luck got to do with it?

Wellwell,

"This after I’d described something efficient and safer than your solution so that doesn’t square now does it. Fact is you’re wrong and you’re not man enough to admit it."

Now you insult me.

I wasn't 'suggesting a solution': just explaining what I reckon the company's doing. It's you who's dreaming up non-existent things. And yes, I am 'man enough' to admit to being wrong if it turns out that that's the case.

But also, just by making that statement, it's made me give more credence to a suspicion proposed by some others here that you yourself are not a man.

And if that's true, I know who you are, now.

The oilpatch is a village.

*****.

BlooBird,

Forgive me please if this sounds blunt, but forget that video. It's just the normal corporate-speak 'how good we are at our game' stuff. From a tech point of view completely meaningless.

Most of today's posts stemmed from an interesting and detailed post from someone posting on a different site, passed over to here, turning into an 'engineering' discussion between myself and Wellwell, which then turned into a rather familiar slanging-match. But that's normal, and engineers will be engineers. Fortunately my degree is in Comparative Literature and Philosophy, so despite a lifetime working at the the sharp end of the oilpatch, I tend to urinate on engineers from a very high place. Have calculator, know how to use it, possess Platinum Amex card and know what 0.52 means. Don't need much more.

I've been doing some more research and I think maybe you're right about the flexible connections being in the turret."

I'm dam sure of it. But have (for the third time today) gone to the company website to look at some pictures. And have discovered I might have been completely wrong in working out what is what. But still correct in other respects. Wish I could have a walk-around, but it's way too late to drive to Holland.

"If so then surely all that would have been done in Rotterdam!"

NO. The connections can only be made once the buoy's been sucked-up and latched into the turret.

"But I'm also right in as much as there are no manual connections between the buoy and FPSO (via turret)."

NO, again. This is not a video-game. YES, there will be 'manual intervention'. Even if it's just some bloke in a hardhat holding a 'tag-line' bit of rope to help guide something suspended from the crane.

Back to 'Wellwell', though.

There's a pic of the 'trial mate-up' of the buoy to the turret swivel -section. But neither are complete when the photo was taken, methinks. Because theer were certainly large studded flanges on the top, but in later pics covered with more stuff.

So without having seen the kit upclose, am not laying any bets as to who between us is closer to the mark.

On which subject, my usual online poker tournament will shortly be starting, so night-night all.

Wellwell,

"It’s not that hard to figure out the engineering and you’re smart enough that you’ll get it"

Thank you.

"but let’s not try and misdirect in the process."

Exactly the point I was trying to make.

OMG! When Ricfle's in bed and unable to post rhetorical questions, Wellwell steps in...

"If you’re seriously suggesting the FPSO uses thrusters to stop it going beyond 359 deg incase things get tied up in knots.....then explain to me what happens if the wind continues to change in a direction requiring 360deg and more?"

I don't know.

Not my problem anyway.

Wellwell,,

"AK you’re all wrong on this I’m afraid old chap."

No, I'm not. And who are you calling 'old'?

Wellwell,

"Let’s pretend it was an animation from a country you don’t have preconceptions over their engineering credentials - say a Dutch company, what say you then? "

Let's not. One of my closest friends is Vietnamese. Useless at anything engineering-wise (he'd be the first to admit it) but a brilliant chef. Whereas Dutch cookery is about the worst in the western world, alongside the Germans.

"Are you suggesting the principle of a slip ring/swivel arrangement doesn’t apply to Bluewater because it’s been described in a Vietnamese animation? "

Yes. The 'very basic principle' obviously applies. However the details don't.

Is 'Emas Communications' API accredited or affiliated to IADC? I doubt it.

Sorry, but you're back 'deramping' again. Has it anything to do with the POO and another spreadbet gone bad?

BlooBird,

You're a bit confused, which is perfectly understandable because a lot of people aren't used to, let alone comfortable with, such 'big boys toys'.

"It really is a puzzle how fluids get between the buoy and the FPSO."

Yep, you're right on that. Which is what today's converations have been mainly about. But only in regard to what are very small technical details.

"It can't be by pipes/tubes/hoses because there'd be one mighty great knot once the FPSO had rotated like a weather-vane a few times."

No. Because once 'latched-in', the buoy becomes 'part of' the FPSO. Look at the picture on the website. The converations were about the 'inner plumbing' within the turret.

"It would seem to me that the interface between the buoy and the FPSO is like a huge bearing … with the outside fixed to the FPSO and the buoy locked into the inside."

Yes, but no. It's the turret which is the 'huge bearing'. And this is the amusing bit, which causes so much confusion in so many peoples' minds. Because when one says 'turret', imagination goes to videos of armoured military tanks, going over all sorts of hills and so on (think of the hills as waves offshore WoS), but the gun remains fixed on a target, through clever computer technology.

Here, it's the other way round, or rather similar, or rather, just a bit different. There's a 'fixed point'. And that is the buoy (with attatched mooring-chains, risers from the wells, umbilicals, and so on). And the FPSO is 'hung' on that. It's not going anywhere. Unlike the tank on the move, with the turret keeping up.

Somewhere within all this relatively moving-parts system there obviously have to be flexible bits. Otherwise it'd all break apart.

But don't imagine they're designed for the boat to go round and round through 360 degrees like the cockerel on a church steeple. Otherwise yes, things would get tied in knots. And that's why the boat's got thrusters, to keep herself within a bad-case 290-degree part of the circle, but not all of it.

*Just look at where the turret is situated on the AM, and the pics on the site, and the build-in. Your cartoon has nothing to do with 'our' reality. All 12,000 tons or so of it.*

Wellwell,

"This answers it."

NO IT FOOKIN' DOESN'T.

All it answers is that some young Vienamese chap can make a charming cartoon about his own company's boat.

A computer-jockey who might not know one end of a sledgehammer from another, let alone be able to lift one.

Dammit, I thought we were getting into an interesting, unusually good-humoured, and detailed technical discussion here, and all of a sudden you're posting Disneyland stuff.

luckyman,

"Wick is the only exploration well in our portfilio"

Yes. But also there's an important thing to remember (or learn about if not clued-up about oilfield details).

It's 'exploration' in name only, for various reglementary licencing-reasons only. Technically, it should be considered an 'offset' to what's already been found, but unfortunately the 'authorities' won't consider it as such.

I'm going slightly offtrack on this, but deliberately, because I know that there are quite a few PI's here who are also 'into' a completey different company, Hurricane Energy. (Hi! Guys an' girls!) HUR are doing things on a completetly different reservoir system, West of Shetland, so there's no DIRECT comparison. Different geology.

Except for this. Corallion drilling Wick is very much the same as the way HUR drilled Halifax. 'Related fields' in terms of what had been done before. The 'exploration' regulations however caused certain 'constrictions' regarding the way Halifax had to be drilled, especially in terms of pressure-overbalance, and thus the drilling-fluids (or 'mud' in the vernacular) used. Which led to a somewhat 'iffy', equivocal result in the eyes of a lot of non-tech oriented people, and a failed DST.

Now the same will happen here, with Wick. The same kind of 'restrictions' will apply. But due to the entirely different geology, being heavily 'overbalanced' shouldn't cause any drastic negative effects as were seen on Halifax, and a DST isn't planned for, anyway. The well's being drilled for data-gathering, no doubt MDT sampling, and very importantly the seismic, or VSP. Which has been permitted. And (to cut a long story short) the 'exploration' aspect shouldn't change any of the results acquired.

A word of caution, though. Wick may be finished in three weeks or so, seemingly. But the data-processing will take a lot more than that. However, if there's 'good news' immediately forthcoming, it generally means the news is good, and the heck with the figures.

" Burning candles spread around the house for a few hours should do the trick."

Thank you, Mario, for this simple advice, which I've instantly put into effect, and will see (or rathe small, or not smell!) the result later.

Typical soldier! Finding the 'simple solution' !

Of course, one has to have candles... And other than a couple of 'decorative ones' (now lit up) I had to search a few minutes for the others. Which I do have. Because it's either a very poor or very stupid household which doesn't a few candles in store, just in case of whatever... Even a solitary 'batchelor pad' like my own.

And lighting a few up adds to a certain 'festive feeling'! Maybe I'll pour myself a glass of wine...

I did have to do a slight search for my box of candles, though. Using an LED torch (of which I have at least six, though I doubt they'd help disperse cooking odours), and rummaging through the 'cupboard under the sink'.

But that in itself was an interesting and enlightening (pls excuse unintended pun) experience. I've suddenly discovered I don't need to but any more bin-bags, pan-scourers or washing-up liquid for quite a while! Never realised how these things can accumulate without one noticing.

Bit like Hurricane shares, I suppose.

Wulbert,

"Does the FPSO vessel continually use its thrusters to remain in position over the buoy (albeit bows on to the wind) exerting little load on the buoy moorings? Or does it effectively use the buoy as an anchor/pivot and let the buoy moorings take the strain of wind & sea forces on the vessel?"

Yes. Or rather, a 'mixture of the two', if you get my meaning. Dependent on the weather conditions, the FPSO will use its thruster / propulsion systems to reduce load on the turret/mooring system, and also possibly to 'maintain heading' especially during offload operations to a shuttle tanker, because wind / tide current / swell might be all different directions...

This is why (however well-intended), one-minute cartoon videos of 'weathervaning' should be taken with a pinch of salt. That boat will be a noisy and uncomfortable workplace at the best of times. Compared with being a Uber-driver, for instance. But heck, that's what the job's all about. Putting on the extra 'greenwater protection' in Dubai should make it a bit less uncomfortable and vulnerable. But everything's relative...

Yuyus,

More in response to your question. All rather personal stuff, but I don't care who knows it.

"Next to where St Cat's is. Which I knew in my childhood as fields occupied by many Lean Kine, but then became occupied by one Fat Bullock..."

But also where in 1969, Steve Winwood, having briefly re-formed 'interimly' Traffic, and while 'Blind Faith' was getting together played a concert. Living 'next door', so to speak, and knowing the college inside-out, and despite being just a spotty teenager, I got in to see the gig. And when Winwood said "I'd like to introduce a friend of mine" and Eric Clapton came on to join the band, the place erupted, of course.

Happy days.

Wellwell,

"The Bluewater website has a good illustration of the turret."

Have you a 'quick link', please?

Goddamit, for lack of other things to do I'm now getting interested in the detail!

And despite the fact that you and I disagree in many of the corporate / financial sides of this share, I'm not going to try gainsaying you on this 'tech aspect'.

I'd hoped to go to Rotterdam and somehow blagged my way into a visit of the boat, but circumstances put it out of the question. But I remain curious...