TQC Practices Applied to Subsea Completion and Production Operations Management in Campos Basin
Authors: Bastos B. Xavier , Barbosa C. Heleno , Formigli J.M. 
Published: December 2007

Since 1978, when the first subsea well in Campos Basin came on stream, more than 210 subsea trees, 22 subsea manifolds and 2000 kms of umbilicals plus flowlines have been installed and operated on this site. To achieve this universe, not only significant break-throughs in the applied technologies were necessary, but mainly the development of a management philosophy to guarantee an optimal cost/benefit relation had to be implemented.

Total Quality Control (TQC) was chosen for this purpose, and several operational procedures, data failure banks and respective statistical analysis were established to provide tools for the managers to achieve the desired goals.

This paper presents several of this control mechanisms, their evolution through time and some other TQC applications such as: service contract models, functional specifications for subsea manifolds and standardization of subsea trees interfaces, highlighting the savings gained throughout all these years.

With a subsea activity average CAPEX and OPEX budget of US$ 500 MM per year, and a subsea oil production of approximately 500,000 BOPD Campos Basin is a good example of the applicability of TQC practices in the search of economical development of offshore fields, specially those ones in deep water sites.

Introduction

Not so long ago, subsea activity was considered a "display window" for Oil Operators technological capacity, without concern about the real economical benefit of this kind of exploitation. These were the flourishing times, when the oil price could stand the wastes created by fancy design practices.

Nowadays this attitude is no longer accepted: as in any other industry, Oil Operators are facing challenges every day, to assure market competitiveness. According to a recent research [Ref. 1], in well managed E & P divisions, the waste of time and money may achieve 30 to 40 percent. Those who can reduce these percentages will certainly guarantee a leading position in the oil business. Meanwhile, subsea technology itself is no more an experimental knowledge arena, becoming an effective tool for oil fields development. The economical impact of this conception can be seen in Fig. 1, where one can verify that the share related to subsea technology (including drilling and completion operations) corresponds to approximately 67% of the total CAPEX of a typical deep water project.

Approximately 15 years ago, Petrobras faced the compulsiveness to start exploitation in deep waters, since it was the only alternative to crude importations. Brazilian reserves are located in increasingly water depths and the company survival is linked to the development of these fields in a competitive and profitable way; a challenge which most Operators are experiencing only now. Today, most Operators are facing similar challenges.

The charts on Figs. 2, 3 and 4 (Brazilian reserves, oil geological potential and production profile) show the importance of deep waters for Petrobras:–59 % of the present reserves are located in water depths greater than 400 meters.–66 % of potential new discoveries are expected to occur on the same range of water depth.–Future production profile also shows the importance of oil flow originated from those sites.

Besides new developments, Petrobras has already a significant amount of installed subsea facilities, which demands careful operational management. Fig. 5 shows a summary of present and future installations in deep waters.

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