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Subsea umbilical risers and flowlines (SURF) projects become increasingly difficult and costly at greater depths. To push the limits and facilitate ever deeper projects, Vallourec has created its line of Premium Upset Riser Ends® (PURE®) pipes. These customizable products help Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) companies and operators overcome challenges by reducing pipe weight while simultaneously increasing wall thickness at the weld location. Hervé-Vadim Lani, Vallourec's PURE® Product Manager, explains the benefits of these products in terms of pipe welding, installation, and design.
Deepwater projects are large-scale and call for huge quantities of pipeline. As major players are poised to go deeper in the future, operating to depths of 2,500 meters and beyond, their technical and operational challenges will only grow. "Ultra-deepwater projects throw up specific and thorny challenges for EPCIs," Hervé-Vadim Lani says, "particularly when it comes to the fatigue life of the riser."
This challenge is the same for both steel catenary riser (SCR) and steel lazy wave riser (SLWR) configurations in deepwater environments. Counterbored pipes are traditionally used for risers and have an extra wall along its full pipe length by design, which increases their weight. This presents limitations, as heavier pipes can cause high fatigue damage and require more buoyancy modules for SLWR configurations.
Overcoming existing challenges with PURE® pipes
In contrast, Vallourec's PURE® products improve fatigue performance by providing increased wall thickness only at the pipe end, i.e. weld location, maintaining nominal thickness throughout the rest of the pipe and therefore reducing the pipe's overall weight.
PURE® pipes help EPCI's and operators optimize SLWR and can even enable SCR configurations in certain cases. As a result, PURE® pipes can support the reduction of the riser suspended length, therefore decrease the quantity of pipe required for the project. This can also lead to a positive impact on the CO2 footprint of the overall project as less steel will have to be manufactured. For projects that still necessitate a SLWR configuration, PURE® pipes help in reducing the number of buoyancy modules, thus saving costs on ancillary equipment and installation time.
Furthermore, PURE® pipes are machined on their internal diameter (ID) and external diameter (OD), offering better pipe end properties-for example, eccentricity, out of roundness and ovality-compared to counterbored pipes. By improving pipe end properties, PURE® pipes facilitate more efficient welding and help reducing cycle time during installation.
"The installation vessels required to lay pipe are very expensive," Hervé-Vadim says. "Running them can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per day." A tough and lengthy installation campaign can drive up expenses on the entire project. Thanks to more compact riser configurations, reduced suspended length and more efficient welding, Vallourec PURE® products help customers reduce their installation time and costs.
In addition to reducing procurement and installation costs, PURE® products also help extend the life of the overall riser system through improved fatigue performance.
An innovative solution with options: PURE® 65 and PURE® STAR
With its outstanding track record in Gulf of Mexico and in Brazilian pre-salt, PURE 65® is Vallourec's field-proven pipe solution that can be used along the entire riser catenary length and fatigue sensitive flowlines. It provides increased wall thickness at the pipe ends, while still being within the maximum allowable wall thickness tolerances. The upset's tight internal and external machining tolerances optimize its fit-up properties and minimize the cut-out rate.
PURE® STAR, which is the latest PURE® development, takes this offer a step further with an upset pipe solution with a stronger thickening beyond nominal wall tolerances. PURE® STAR targets fatigue sensitive sections of the riser and can be combined in sequence with regular counterbored pipes. In addition, the wall thickness at the pipe ends can be adjusted to validate the pre-defined fatigue requirements and thus allow for a full riser system design optimization.
Both PURE® 65 and PURE® STAR are from steel grade X65 QOS and present both a suitable steel chemistry and properties for challenging sour service offshore field developments.
Taking the industry deeper
Vallourec's PURE® 65 was first installed using reel-lay for Shell's Ursa project in the Gulf of Mexico (TechnipFMC, 2008), and using J-lay at Petrobras' P55 field located off the Brazilian coast (Saipem, 2011). Learnings from the latter project were shared in the paper OTC-25792-MS presented at Houston's Offshore Technology Conference in May 2015. The document states that Vallourec's PURE® 65 pipes demonstrated significant improvements in welding performance.
As operators explore deeper waters and face increasing technical challenges, we are here to support them.
Hervé-Vadim Lani PURE® Product ManagerVallourec's innovative solutions are evolving to ensure that operators can undertake ultra-deepwater projects in the most reliable, cost-effective and safest way possible.
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CountryArrow
- Corporate
- USA
- DateArrow
- 2021
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- VAM
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Vallourec SA published this content on 20 January 2022 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 20 January 2022 14:50:05 UTC.
