Ursa - Team-Based Project Management - Overcoming Adversity in 4000 ft. of Water
Authors: Jefferis Robert G. , Digre Kris A. , Haney John P. 
Published: October 2008

The Ursa field is an oil field with significant volumes of gas located 6 miles east of the Mars field, in water depths ranging from 3800 to 4100 feet. The preferred Production System for developing the field utilizes a 24 slot TLP located in MC block 810 developing reserves in MC blocks 809, 810, 853 and 854. The TLP facilities have processing capability for 150MBOPD, 400MMCFD and 25 MBWPD. The base development plan called for 14 production wells on the TLP. The plan includes batch setting 21 TLP well positions and predrilling 6 of the TLP wells. The TLP was designed for flexibility including: 2840 tons of spare payload, one spare export riser support, several subsea flow line riser supports, 7 spare well slots, processing facilities to accommodate early production rates of 175MBOPD and 550MMCFD and structural strength to accommodate these flexibility items. Installation was planned to commence in June 1998 with first oil targeted for April 1999.

In late 1997 significant shallow flow occurred at the batch set site during the final batch operations such that it became unusable for foundation support. Development plans were modified to batch set 12 production wells and proceed with 1-2 pre-drills. The installation site was moved to an area with still significant but smaller shallow flow risk in MC block 809, in 3800 feet of water. Due to the drilling concerns and risk, the planned installation commencement was changed from June 1998 to October 1998. The Ursa Project Team responded with significant modifications to their plans completely changing the original installation procedure and enabling the team to proceed with a plan which had a chance of still meeting the April 1999 target first oil date.

Introduction

The Ursa Project was initially organized using a traditional Project Manager. Project objectives included reducing cycle time for design1, producing low life-cycle cost, and fast recovery of reserves. After a concentrated planning effort, a fast-tract control schedule was developed (Fig. 1) with the otential to greatly affect all the aforementioned project drivers. This control schedule indicated that many of the different project execution specialty teams would have to adjust past methods of assembly or timing sequence for the overall project benefit2. Most teams would have all or parts of their responsibility on the critical path. The Ursa Offshore Coordination Team (UOCT) was formed to coordinate activities between the specialty teams and propose any schedule modifications.

Once the project was underway, management at Shell decided to proceed with a team based project control approach, coinciding with Shell's shift to a multi-project organization. Leaders of each project specialty team, i.e., structural or facility design, offshore installation or integration, well systems, pipelines, project controls, hull fabrication, module fabrication, tendon and foundation fabrication, formed the Ursa Project Execution Leadership Team (UPELT). The UPELT was responsible for maintaining the overall project execution budget, approve any schedule changes proposed by the UOCT and management of and/or resolving any change conflicts. Communication and reporting lines were maintained with the subsurface group (owners of the Ursa asset until the field is ready to produce), the production operations group (the future owners) and theproject sponsor (who coordinated exchanges with the other company partner representatives) through a 3-member Ursa Leadership Team (ULT).