ESSO SUBSEA PRODUCTION SYSTEM ADVANCES

June 11, 1990
The third phase of Esso Exploration & Production U.K. Ltd.'s diverless maintained cluster (DMAC) system is under way with the award of contracts worth about 200,000 ($328,000) to Fuel Subsea Engineering Ltd., Woking, England, and Rockwater Ltd., Aberdeen, Scotland. The program aims to develop a diverless subsea production system for development of marginal fields in water depths of 330-3,300 ft. The system consists of a central manifold tied to satellite wells by jumper spool pieces.

The third phase of Esso Exploration & Production U.K. Ltd.'s diverless maintained cluster (DMAC) system is under way with the award of contracts worth about 200,000 ($328,000) to Fuel Subsea Engineering Ltd., Woking, England, and Rockwater Ltd., Aberdeen, Scotland.

The program aims to develop a diverless subsea production system for development of marginal fields in water depths of 330-3,300 ft.

The system consists of a central manifold tied to satellite wells by jumper spool pieces.

All components, including central manifold and trees, can be installed with a conventional drilling rig with the manifold sized to go through the moonpool.

Fuel Subsea and Rockwater contracts call for detailed designs for the tooling and methods of diverless replacement of flow line spool pieces and umbilical jumpers.

Esso plans land tests this year and may conduct under-water tests next year.

In the first two phases of DMAC, in which Fuel Subsea and Rockwater were involved, improvements were made to an earlier tooling concept developed for the Esso Deepwater Integrated Production System for replacement of subsea chokes using commercially available, remote operated vehicles. The work included development of detailed designs for the improved concept.

This work will continue in Phase III of the program.

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