Key Considerations in the Design of Offshore Production Facilities for Arctic Offshore Conditions

For the development of production facilities in the Arctic, emphasis will be on the adequate design of structures and pipelines to resist the ice loads and on the requirements to a clean environment. However, the designers should take time to identify the most profitable development schemes by optimising the sales product from the field. This will put emphasis on the transport solution of the products and the paper calls for careful discussions of alternative transport solutions including pipeline transport and offshore loading schemes for stable oil and condensate products. Further, the paper highlights the needs for efficient project management identifying how the economic ale of a project will deteriorate if the costs are exceeded or if the schedule for the project for start up of production is being missed. INTRODUCTION Key considerations to be taken into account in the design of offshore production facilities for the arctic offshore includes knowledge about the conditions related to the physical environment (meteorological and oceanographical conditions) and the soil at the site as well as the actions exerted from waves and ice on the selected platform(s) to be placed at the location. Furthermore, the requirements of a clean environment are of key importance in the Arctic. These are the traditional considerations carried out by the engineers with civil and/or environmental background. The sales products from the field will influence on the development solution and the offshore production facilities where main focus will be on the handling of the gas and unstable condensate associated with oil production and the condensate associated with gas production. The optimization of the product may generate additional valuable income, but the long distance to the market and the physical difficulty to construct 1 Statoil, Stavanger, Norway, 2 Stavanger University College, Stavanger, Norway 3 NTNU, Trondheim, Norway, 4 University Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway