Pre-salt Seafloor Construction/Remote Operations Challenges Part 3

With the experience Petrobras has gained in deepwater field construction, the national operator has learned the best ways to get the job done and who to work with. Much of Petrobras’ deepwater seafloor construction work has been done by DOF, Technip, Subsea 7, FMC and Aker. Large deepwater post-salt fields such as Roncador, Frade and Marlim amongst others have been the main testing grounds of many construction techniques and much of the equipment being installed. Obviously, experience in deepwater seafloor construction has also been gained by Petrobras and service providers in locations such as the GoM and West Africa. Most of the pre-salt subsea trees will be built and installed by FMC, OneSubsea and Aker. FMC has a total order worth $1,5 billion, which was announced in March of 2012. The order includes 49 subsea trees, tooling, and associated subsea controls. The trees are being installed in multiple pre-salt fields for both production and injection wells. The equipment was designed and manufactured at FMC Technologies' facilities in Brazil and FMC’s Well Access Completion Workover Riser (CWOR) system is used for installation, completion and intervention of these subsea trees.

For light construction and subsea equipment installation FMC uses its FTO Services, which is capable of providing a number of important light construction services, including the installation of subsea trees and jumpers, as well as field commissioning activities. Each vessel is equipped with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) owned and operated by Chouest affiliate C-Innovation to guide and connect equipment. Aker also has a large contract for subsea tree installation in the pre-salt, concerning installation work on 60 well-sets with vertical subsea trees, subsea control systems, tools and spares within a four-year period, 2014-2018. This has led Aker to increase its footprint in Brazil, "We are continuing our efforts to establish large-scale manufacturing capabilities based on the technologies developed for Petrobras during our first pre-salt projects," said Luis Araujo, president and country manager of Aker Solutions in Brazil.