Arctic Offshore Engineering

372 Pages·2012·7.42 MB·English

by  Andrew Palmer

ARCTIC
OFFSHORE ENGINEERING
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ARCTIC
OFFSHORE ENGINEERING
Andrew Palmer

National University of Singapore, Singapore
Ken Croasdale
K R Croasdale & Associates Ltd, Canada
World Scientific
NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI
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Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
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UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ARTIC OFFSHORE ENGINEERING
Copyright © 2013 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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ISBN 978-981-4368-77-3
Printed in Singapore.
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Foreword
The Arctic is important to all of us. It offers to humanity enormous resources of
oil, gas, gas hydrates, gold, iron ore, diamonds, timber, fish and hydroelectric
power. At the same time, it is a fragile human and biological environment. It has
indigenous peoples with their own cultures and history, all too easily disrupted
by outsiders. It has a wealth of animals and plants, each special in its own way
but liable to damage.

Andrew Palmer and Ken Croasdale have written this book about Arctic Offshore
Engineering, and examine how we can exploit the resources in and under the sea
for human purposes, and can do so safely, economically and with minimal risk
to the environment. Singapore may at first seem a surprising place to be writing
such a book, but in fact we have a significant and growing interest in the Arctic,
from several directions, among them shipping and petroleum production. At
Keppel we are already active in more than one of those fields, and have a long
term commitment to the area.

I welcome the book enthusiastically.
Choo Chiau Beng
CEO, Keppel Corporation
Singapore
June 2012
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Preface
AA Milne wrote in the preface to a detective story that the only good reason for
writing anything was that you wanted to, and that he would be prouder of a
telephone directory written with love than of a tragedy in blank verse, written as
a chore. We agree completely.
The Arctic is a region of endless fascination, beauty and excitement. Many
writers more eloquent than we are have explored its biology, geography, history
and environment. At the same time, it is the home of many people who want to
pursue civilised and comfortable lives with the amenities of the 21st century. The
Arctic seas and the lands bordering them are important to the wider human
community as a source of raw materials, above all petroleum, but as well as for
fish, timber and mineral ores, and important too for tourism and exploration.
Many important reserves of petroleum have been found already, some of those
reserves are in production, and the unexplored geology of this vast region has
many promising structures: some estimates have it that as much as a third of the
petroleum still to be discovered will be found in the Arctic. With that as one
priority, we must not forget that the Arctic is uniquely vulnerable to damage: if
we make a mess, the consequences will be with us for decades.
Oil and gas reserves close to shore can be produced by horizontal drilling,
but beyond a few kilometres the petroleum industry will need platforms to drill
from and produce to, and pipelines and other systems to bring the petroleum
ashore and transport it to markets. Those structures have to operate safely in an
extremely demanding environment. The ocean is cold and rough, and for much
of the year it will be covered with ice, often in very large pieces. Ice pushes
against structures with great force, and drags along the seabed, strongly enough
to cut huge gouges. Sometimes the seabed will be partly frozen, and anything
we do may alter the thermal regime and thaw or freeze the seabed soil, greatly
modifying its physical properties. Almost all the problems of offshore
construction in lower latitudes are still present, and there are storm waves and
high winds, tidal currents, shifting seabeds and the added challenge of long
periods of winter darkness. Most importantly, anything we are going to build has
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viii Arctic Offshore Engineering
to be constructible, at an acceptable cost, within a reasonable timeframe, safely
and without environmental damage.
Serious thinking about offshore structures in the Arctic seas began more
than forty years ago, initially in Cook Inlet in southern Alaska, then in the
Beaufort Sea and the Canadian Arctic Islands, and later in many other areas.
One of the critical subjects was the level of ice forces on fixed structures, as
opposed to ships, which are rather different and can move to avoid the worst ice
features. That raised questions unfamiliar to civil engineers accustomed to steel,
concrete, rock and soil, because ice is a totally different material of a remarkably
unusual kind.
In this book we explore the many issues that an engineer designing for the
Arctic offshore will encounter and will have to respond to. Without apology, and
because engineering is about human needs and desires, we begin with the human
context, and consider the people who will be affected by offshore construction,
and their diverse priorities. Next we examine the physical and biological
environment. We then move on to ice as a material and how it responds to stress,
a deeply controversial and difficult subject where the development of knowledge
is still at an early stage. That leads us to the many different kinds of offshore
structures, and to the factors that influence a choice between them. From there
we move on to pipelines and transportation by tanker, and then to safety,
environmental factors and the ultimate decommissioning and removal of
structures we no longer need. Finally, we consider the implications of human
factors and the people who will build and operate systems in the Arctic offshore.
We are not the first to have written about these subjects. Four books have
been a particular inspiration. Professor Bernard Michel of Université Laval,
Quebec, devoted his career to ice research and was in the forefront of
developing university courses in ice mechanics, and postgraduate research. His
book Ice mechanics published in 1978 was a very valuable and comprehensive
early contribution. Tim Sanderson’s Ice mechanics: risks to offshore structures
came out in 1988. Elegantly written, full of insight, not afraid to question the
received opinion of the time, it remains a powerful source that repays rereading,
even though the subject has moved on. Sadly, and to all our loss, Tim’s health
made it impossible for him to continue at the leading edge of ice mechanics.
Peter Wadhams’ Ice in the ocean carries with it his unrivalled knowledge of the
Arctic oceans and his delight in their beauty and strangeness. More recently,
Willy Weeks’ magisterial On Sea Ice was published in 2010, and reflects the
deep and broadly-based experience of a lifetime.
Preface ix
We are grateful to many people we have worked with over the years, in
many different places and on many different projects. In addition to the
colleagues mentioned above, we would particularly like to thank Ainur Abuova,
Razek Abdelnour, Gray Alexander, Norm Allyn, Ricardo Argiolas, Mike Ashby,
Ravi Aurora, Eleanor Bailey, Anne Barker, Ken Been, Frank Bercha, Morten
Bjerkås, Denis Blanchet, Steve Blasco, Bob Brown, Tom Brown, Jim Bruce,
Steve Bruneau, Gus Cammaert, George Comfort, Max Coon, Greg Crocker,
John Dempsey, Dave Dickins, Ken Downie, Rod Edwards, Tony Evans, Simon
Falser, John Fitzpatrick, Ginny Frankenstein, Lindsey Franklin, Bob Frederking,
Mark Fuglem, Lorne Gold, Dougal Goodman, Jed Hamilton, Willott Heerde,
Kevin Hewitt, Chris Hill, John Hutchinson, Knut Høyland, Chris Heuer, Hans
Jahns, Catherine Jahre-Nilsen, Waleed Jazrawi, Bengt Johansson, Michelle
Johnston, Ian Jordaan, Ollie Kaustinen, Tuomo Kärnä, Arno Keinonen, John
Kenny, Hans Kivisild, Ibrahim Konuk, Austin Kovacs, Rick Kry, Ivana Kubat,
Glenn Lanan, Arny Lengkeek, George Li, Pavel Liferov, Sveinung Løset, Mauri
Määttänen, Glenn Mainland, Bob Marcellus, Dan Masterson, Dmitri
Matskevitch, Derek Mayne, Dave McGonigal, Richard McKenna, Michel Metge,
Per-Olav Moslet, Derek Muggeridge, Karen Muggeridge, Charlie Neill, Don
Nevel, Rune Nilsen, Peter Noble, Ravi Perera, Roger Pilkington, Anatoly
Polomoshnov, Alan Ponter, Bob Pritchard, Matthew Quah, Terry Ralston, Jim
Rice, Ron Ritch, Mohamed Sayed, Joachim Schwarz, Karl Shkhinek, Victor
Smirnov, Dev Sodhi, Walt Spring, Alan Strandberg, Paul Stuckey, Gennady
Surkov, Rocky Taylor, Graham Thomas, Garry Timco, Hendrik Tjiawi, Pavel
Truskov, Paul Verlaan, Sergey Vernyayev, Stanislav Vershinin, David Walker,
Cynthia Wang, Jeff Weaver, Alexandra Weihrauch, Mitch Winkler, Brian
Wright, Pete Wiebe, Yap Kim Thow, Abzal Yergaliyev and Zheng Jiexin.
We thank the many companies we have worked with, and particularly RJ
Brown and Associates, Keppel Offshore, Panarctic Oils, Polar Gas, BP,
ExxonMobil, Dome Petroleum, Imperial Oil, Elvary Neftegaz, AgipKCO, Total,
Statoil and Shell. It should not be thought that those companies or the
individuals listed would agree with all our conclusions. Some of this material
was first put forward in the Arctic Engineering course OT5207 at the National
University of Singapore, and we are grateful to the students on that course for
their comments.
Our determination is to make this book stimulating and enjoyable, on
principle and not merely for the utilitarian reason that people engage more with
subjects they find enjoyable. The mistakes and misunderstandings are our own,