Comments: OTC Winners
Authors: Donnelly John 
Published: February 2015

Congratulations are due this year’s winners of the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) awards. The recipients will be honored during OTC, which runs 2–5 May at the Reliant Center in Houston. The OTC Distinguished Individual Achievement Award will recognize J. Kim Vandiver, a professor at the Massachusetts Inst. of Technology. He is being honored for his technical breakthroughs in the dynamics of vortex-induced vibration, which have enhanced the design of structures to with-stand high ocean currents, enabling oil and gas production to occur in progressively deeper water.

The 2005 OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for Organizations goes to Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corp. and Technip for their pioneering efforts in the Gulf of Mexico in delivering three generations of spar floating production systems in 9 years. This is the second OTC award for Kerr-McGee in recent years. In 2002, the company won the same award for its Neptune Spar project, the first spar production platform.

Kerr-McGee and Technip have developed a total of five production spars, using three different designs, over the past decade. The collaboration resulted in the world’s first production spar—now referred to as a “classic” spar design—which was installed at the Kerr-McGee-operated Neptune field in the eastern Gulf of Mexico in 1997. In 2001, the companies developed the world’s first application of truss spars at the Kerr-McGee-operated Nansen and Boomvang gas fields in the East Breaks area of the Gulf of Mexico. Nansen lies in 3,678 ft of water, while Boomvang is in 3,453 ft. Another truss spar for the Gunnison field began production in 2002.

Last year saw another world’s first with the development and delivery of the third-generation spar, called a “cell spar,” for the Kerr-McGee-operated Red Hawk field in the Gulf’s Garden Banks Block 877. Kerr-McGee holds a 50% interest in the field, with Devon Energy also taking a 50% share. Red Hawk is a two-well subsea development in 5,300 ft water depth. A sixth spar, using the truss design, is currently under construction for another deepwater project at Kerr-McGee’s Constitution field.

The cell spar is designed essentially as an alternative to a long-distance tieback. The design consists of a vertical configuration of seven cylinders that are 20 ft in diameter and form a giant column that supports a 4,700-ton production platform. The spar is anchored to the seafloor by polyester moorings that are lighter, less expensive, and less corrosive than steel cables. Red Hawk’s production is at 120 million ft3/D of gas with expansion capacity of up to 300 million ft3/D.

The breakthrough with the Red Hawk spar was its economy and small size. The less expensive cell spars will enable producers to look at deepwater reserves that in the past might have been too small to develop. Reserves previously required approximately 100 mil-lion BOE to justify development, but with smaller production platforms, reserves of less than half that size are now viable.

Other producers have begun to adopt Kerr-McGee’s and Technip’s groundbreaking technology. Thirteen spars have been installed in the Gulf of Mexico, and Technip has built 10 of them and is currently constructing another. Technip also just signed a contract with Murphy Oil for the construction of a spar for the Kikeh field in Malaysia, which will be the first spar installed outside the Gulf of Mexico.