The Use of Unmanned Production Buoys to Develop Marginal or Submarginal Stranded Fields or End of Life Hydrocarbon Resources
Authors: Bone David 
Published: April 2012

This paper summarises original development work implemented by Ocean Resourceinto a new type of Unmanned Production Buoy facility, the Sea Producer. Thiswork, which is both comprehensive and wide-ranging, covers the use ofautonomous buoy technology to develop various offshore oil and gas productionscenarios which would otherwise be uneconomic or indeed impossible. Recentlythis technology has received considerable interest as it represents, for somesmaller developments, possibly the only sensible and economic way forward. Thedesign concept is flexible and has applications well beyond simple production. Ocean is carrying out on-going development work into the use of the concept forcarbon sequestration allied to enhanced oil recovery. This novel developmentwill provide an initiating technology for offshore carbon sequestration againat hitherto highly economic costs. The detail of this is, however, beyond thescope of this paper.

Ocean Resource has developed and pioneered the concept of remote offshore oilor gas production from an unmanned production buoy over a period of 20 yearsand is the only company with specific experience and expertise in this complexarea. Ocean has designed, built, operated and maintained its own high stabilitybuoy systems and has completed a number of buoy designs for working buoysystems in use with Apache, Mossgas Pty, Exxon-Mobil and others for oil relatedoperations. More recently Ocean Resource has been responsible for the design ofa 5MW Power Buoy for CNR International UK Ltd (Canadian Natural Resources). Unfortunately Monitor Oil PLC, the principle constructor, went into liquidationprior to completion of the project but it is envisaged that this unit, which is95% complete will shortly be redeployed on another field. The Power Buoylocated at Dundee is subject to an option agreement for this purpose.

Ocean Resource's low cost autonomous buoy systems represent a game-changingtechnology that will enable the economic development of hitherto unexploitableor stranded oil and gas reserves. The technology is generally branded as SeaCommander where it relates to field control buoys (a developed product) and SeaProducer where it relates to production.

Sea Producer enables a step-change in offshore development expenditure loweringcapital costs at the start of project together with greatly reduced operationalcosts leading to low " through-life" costs for standalone, step-out developmentsor early production scenarios. Furthermore the relatively minimal nature of theoffshore facilities comprising the buoy and storage system leads to rapiddeployment and hence faster income and profit return to any offshoreproject.

The unique autonomous buoy technology has been developed by Ocean Resource overa period of 20 years and is an evolution of existing systems first deploed inthe 1980's. It is therefore both mature and proven. It can be used for sub-seaoil and gas field control, remote pigging, multi-phase pumping, chemicalinjection, subsea production support and remote flaring.