Nansen/Boomvang Field Development--Commissioning/Operations
Authors: Brown Daniel , Potts Dennis 
Published: October 2008

The Kerr-McGee Nansen and Boomvang Project Team implemented a comprehensive pre-commissioning effort to achieve timely first production. The careful evaluation of this effort can serve as a guide to others who are involved in the planning of offshore facility installations. Pre-commissioning success on Nansen and Boomvang was accomplished by carefully focusing on several key areas: an appropriate precommissioning organization among participating companies, a clearly defined scope, a rational pre-commissioning philosophy and effective relationships with regulatory organizations. Active involvement by Kerr-McGee's production operators was also critical in achieving success. By executing the developed pre-commissioning plan, Kerr-McGee has been able to make an essentially seamless transition from facility construction to facility production.

Introduction

The Nansen and Boomvang developments are located in the Gulf of Mexico in water depths of 3,675' and 3,450', respectively. Nansen includes East Breaks blocks 602 and 646. Boomvang includes East Breaks blocks 642, 643 and 688. The fields are being developed using two independent Spars. Each Spar utilizes a number of Top Tension Risers (TTR) for tying back vertically produced wells. In addition, a number of satellite wells will be tied back to each Spar using flexible flowlines and risers. Steel Catenary Risers (SCR) and pipelines provide for export from each Spar. The production capacity of each facility is 40,000 BOPD and 200 MMSCFD of natural gas and 40,000 BWPD. The partners for the Nansen development are Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corporation (Kerr-McGee) and Ocean Energy, Inc. (Ocean Energy). The Boomvang partners are Enterprise Oil Gulf of Mexico, Inc. (Enterprise), Kerr-McGee and Ocean Energy, Inc. Kerr-McGee is the operator for both developments. Additional background information is contained in OTC 14089 (Thibodeaux, et al, 2002).

The project team recognized early in the project implementation that successful commissioning both onshore and offshore of the spar hull, topsides, subsea and export systems was essential to the overall timely completion of both developments. It was also recognized that back to back execution of the two projects would be a challenge for commissioning manpower and resources and that production operations input was vital to the success of the effort. Thus, early on, an integrated commissioning project group was organized consisting of key individuals from the overall integrated project team along with Kerr-McGee Production Operations representatives. This group was charged with developing and implementing integrated commissioning plans and procedures for the entire field development including spar hull, topsides, subsea and export systems. These plans are critical in making the transition from the discipline and area based construction approach to a systembased approach required for start-up and production. Making this transition is necessary to ensure that the platform equipment is ready to achieve timely first production. While the importance of properly preparing facility equipment for start-up cannot be overstated, the proper preparation of the facility's operating personnel is of equal importance.