DeepStar's Pains and Gains
Authors: Hays P.R. 
Published: October 2008

Introduction

Since DeepStar's inception in 1992, we've worked for 5 years to progressively come to grips with deepwater technology. The program remains: "An Industry Wide Cooperative Effort to Develop Economically Viable, Low Risk Methods to Produce Hydrocarbons from Deepwater Tracts in the Gulf of Mexico." Yet a large part of DeepStar's budget is focused on work whose value is not specific to a geographic region. This is reflected in the make-up of the 18 oil company participants. Further, the technologies developed have very broad applicability.

DeepStar presently has seven major technical committees including regulatory, flow assurance, subsea equipment, vessel, mooring & risers, drilling, reservoir and project overview in the 1996 - 1997 Phase III program.

A couple of papers in the DeepStar session cover aspects of flow assurance. Ref. I "Hydrate Plug Dissociation Field Test" is representative of the large percentage of DeepStar's Phase III budget (-35%) devoted to flow assurance issues. Ref. 4 "Testing and Evolution of Coiled Tubing Methods to Remove Blockages from Long Offset Subsea Pipelines" blends into the category of subsea equipment. The vessels, mooring & riser committee contributed a paper on a field scale test of a potential cost reduction idea: Ref. 2 "Installation of DeepStar's Polyester Taut Leg Mooring" that was successfully installed. Further, novel riser concepts applicable to our local environment are still being progressed through malytical studies. Ref. 3 "Low Cost Deepwater Hybrid Riser system," provides an example. We also included a paper on work by the Drilling and Completions committee, Ref. 5 "DeepStar's Evaluation of Shallow Water Flow Problems in the Gulf of Mexico" which has sought to come to grips with shallow water flow phenomena encountered during drilling operations. A summary is given in Ref. 5. Session constraints forced the omission of a paper on our efforts to produce a deepwater floating production operations plan that is being carried out by the regulatory committee. This committee continues to have its meetings hosted at the Minerals Management Service (MMS) facilities in an effort to maintain an open dialog about deepwater development planning.

The OTC 1997 Special Session on Composites Offshore, included the paper, "The Application of Advanced Composite Technology to Marine Drilling Riser Systems: Design, Manufacturing and Test," Ref. 6. DeepStar has provided seed money and technical support for this $4.8 million effort to develop a light weight composite drilling riser. The effort has entered into the third and final year of this National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) funded cooperative technology development program. A key effort this year will be to connect the consortium with a DeepStar operator willing to employ the riser during drilling operations.

DeepStar has progressed over 5 years through Phase I, Phase II, Phase IIA, and is now in Phase III. We have performed many technical studies and state-of-the-art assessments. Each phase of DeepStar has gradually encompassed more prototype testing and development of new deepwater system components. Phase II included development and testing of metal tube umbilicals and some testing of pipeline leak repair equipment.