Technology from Europe
NORWAY / INTERVIEW

To optimize Norwegian shelf recovery, equipment must get lighter

Det Norske Veritas (DNV) is an independent certification organization dedicated to ensuring the safety of persons and property in various industries. Originally specializing in merchant vessels, the foundation has grown to encompass many other industries, including those working in the Norwegian offshore petroleum industry. As the fields mature and the equipment ages, DNV’s focus has expanded to other aspects of the oil and gas industry, including software systems. World Oil spoke with DNV’s Per Jahre Nilsen, Manager of Business Development for Well Intervention, about the future of Norwegian shelf development.

PER JAHRE NILSEN is Manager of Business Development, Well Intervention, for Det Norsk Veritas. With 15 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, Nilsen has worked in the fields of risk and safety, fluid dynamics, drilling, subsea well intervention, rules and regulations, software and IT reliability. His expertise includes project management, verification, classification, survey, course development, development of DNV offshore standards and class notations, management and business/services development. His clients include major oil companies, rig owners and suppliers.

World Oil: As we reach the one-year anniversary of the Macondo oil spill, offshore drilling is experiencing many changes. Are there any new certifications or classifications in the Norwegian North Sea that stem from this incident?

Per Jahre Nilsen: We have not started to develop anything new, but we have had more requests for additional work on existing notations that have not been tested so widely after this incident. And that goes specifically toward integration and software issues.

We are seeing more focus on the working environment and safety issues on the Norwegian continental shelf. Quite a few employee organizations, the unions, that are working offshore have criticized the operators for not taking the risks of working out there seriously. That is a big debate. The operators are almost tied down by the government to prove that they are fit for operations. There have been some recent incidents, such as a gas leak in an annulus and others. This emphasis on safety is extremely important. Some of these offshore installations are quite old, after all.

There has been a debate going on for many years about whether to start exploration drilling outside some of the best fishing resource areas in Norway. But according to recent news, the government has turned it down, saying there will be no further exploration during this govern-mental period, which means the next three to four years. What is the reason for that? It might be an impact from Macondo.

WO: How closely does Det Norsk Veritas work with government agencies?

Nilsen: We are in very close dialog with NPD [Norwegian Petroleum Directorate] all the time. I think DNV has meetings probably every week with them, from the different service lines. They meet regularly to discuss a lot of different things. There are also meetings with the top management level of NPD at least once a year. We are also in regular close contact with other European regulatory agencies. We consider communication with these entities to be extremely important.

WO: In the near future, what new technologies need to be developed to maximize recovery on the Norwegian shelf?

Nilsen: The answer to that is discipline-dependent. In regards to subsea wells, there need to be consistent standards regarding equipment, because different operators are using different technologies for developing wells, and it’s difficult to jump from one subsea well to another. That is a problem we’re working extremely hard on. There are similar issues with other subsea-related equipment, such as subsea compressor stations, subsea pumps and so forth.

The trend has been toward development of smaller fields as well. There has been a lot of discussion about how to do that. It also correlates with the development of new well intervention techniques such as riserless well intervention or light well intervention.

Recently there have been a lot of problems on the Norwegian Shelf with respect to all these huge rigs that were built during the last rig boom. They are just too large, so they can’t be used easily for well intervention operations.

Also, the BOPs are much, much bigger today than they were back when these fields were developed. Consequently, we have had a lot of challenges—such as fatigue issues—on almost all the wellheads. That’s a difficult problem, because when these subsea wells were developed, the BOPs weighed only around 250 metric tons. Today a BOP can easily weigh 400 or 450 metric tons. If you use a big, heavy BOP on an old wellhead, then you have to try very hard not to overload the wells, and that has been a major challenge.

WO: What is the solution? Will the industry be forced to return to lighter equipment?

Nilsen: One thing we need to do is go back to lighter BOPs. The major oil company in Norway, Statoil, is ordering two well-intervention semisubmersibles that are lighter and more like the rigs they used when they actually created these oil fields. That is going to be the trend in the future.

WO: Earlier, you mentioned software integration as a problematic issue creating downtime and delays in commissioning. What is being done to address this?

Nilsen:I’m actually the project manager in DNV for developing the new software qualification, though my background is mechanical engineering and I spent a lot of my time working on drilling systems and equipment. We are seeing a lot of downtime related to software problems, and integration of all these complex systems. This issue has not been taken seriously enough by the players in the market.

The suppliers have their own way of dealing with things. The shipyards do not want to take on the responsibility of integrating these very complex systems. They’re more concerned with logistics and building, and moving steel around.

The software engineering discipline is treated very differently from the way other engineering disciplines are treated. There is no regulation, and there are very few common standards and methods. This means that they—the people who have been developing software for these systems—have been able to do what they want to do for a long time.

WO: Could you give an example of the kinds of problems software issues create?

Nilsen: If you look at the life span of a drilling rig or drillship, it’s very often 20 to 25 years. But the life span of software is a completely different story. Software is like milk or butter—it just doesn’t keep that long.

You need to have ways to make sure, if you’re a rig owner, that the supplier of your software system has the competence to maintain and update the system for one year, five years or 10 years, and that you can get spare parts for it. What do you do if your system stops working? Has the supplier left enough documentation so that it is feasible to get the system up and running again? What about the competence of the people that actually sat down and programmed this software? Are they even still alive, and have they managed to leave so much documentation behind them so that it’s possible to recreate what they actually did? This is a major problem today. That’s what we are trying to do something about with this new classification. 

Editor’s note: Software systems integration offshore and the new operational standard are discussed in detail on page T–154.