The Galahad Platform - A State of the Art Minimum Facilities Installation for the Southern North Sea
Authors: Saltel H. , Stadler R.L. 
Published: October 2008

Mobil North Sea Limited recently brought the Galahad Platform into production in the North Sea UK Southern Sector Galahad is a minimum facility not normally manned production platform The platform was designed, procured, fabricated, installed and commissioned in approximately half the time of previous Southern Sector platforms. The work was completed between November 1994 and October 1995 at a considerably cost than previous developments. Several key learning areas were identified from the project including:Project Management applying the Principles of the CRINE (Cost Reduction Initiative in the New Era) processMinimum Facilities Installations - Comparison of Various ConceptsThe use of QRA (Quantified Risk Analysis) ]n Design DevelopmentThe Future of Minimum Facilities m the North Sea

The Galahad Project was managed by Mobil using a small Project Task Force with two primary contractors working under EPIC type contracts. This style of management embraces the principles of the North Sea CRINE initiative where operators and contractors work in partnership complete projects in anefficient and timely manner. Another application of CRINE was to use an existing project design and previously established contractor project team.

Several minimum facilities designs were considered for the development. The use of the monopod concept allowed for substantial reductions in topside weight, construction and installation cost compared with previous more conventional platforms.

While designing the Galahad minimum facilities installation, our overall strategy was to reduce costs without compromising safety or reliability. Although not normally manned, the platform WIII be visited on average one day each month to perform routine maintenance. QRA was used to demonstrate that personnel working on the monopod installation would not be exposed to significantly higher levels of risk than are associated with four pile installations. QRA techniques were also employed in design development, accepting or rejecting safety features with the overall goal of developing a workplace where major hazards were prevented, controlled or mitigated to ensure that individual risks were as low as reasonably practicable.

Introduction

To competitively produce gas from the Galahad reservoir in the UK Sector of the Southern North Sea it was necessary to evaluate new cost effective methods of developing reserves, Galahad was the fourth field to be tied into the Lancelot Area Production System (1.APS) pipeline, Earlier phases of development were the Lancelot, Guinevere and Excalibur platforms, all of which are conventional four pile structures. Embracing the principles of CRINE Mobil North Sea Limited (MNSI.) was able to achieve significant cost savings during the Galahad project An existing Amoco monopod design was adapted to the for producing the Galahad reservoir By using the same design team and construction yard MNSL was able on experience gained during an earlier project. Quantified Risk Analysis (QRA) techniques were used in focusing expenditures to target areas where risk to personnel could be significantly reduced.