OVERVIEW

Offshore operations associated with oil and gas exploration and production have blossomed during the last 30 years. The needs of such operations have generated a unique new engineering discipline, offshore engineering, that has pulled ideas and people from most of the traditional engineering disciplines such as petroleum engineering, ocean engineering, naval and marine engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and aeronautical engineering. This new and vibrant engineering discipline is responsible for the design, construction and operation of a plethora of new structures and vessels used in offshore operations. These include exploration vessels, drilling ships, several types of offshore platforms, well completion tubulars and equipment, flowlines, pipelines and risers as well as a variety of support vessels ranging from barges with heavy cranes to J-lay and pipe reeling ships. Section 2.1 introduces some of the major types of offshore structures used in production, as they are either the termination points of flowlines and risers that bring hydrocarbons from subsea wells, or are the starting points of export pipelines that take processed hydrocarbons to other offshore facilities or to shore. The interaction of these tubular structures with platforms and other production facilities results in challenging loading scenarios that will be introduced. Each type of production facility is first described in general, followed by a more detailed description of a representative facility of the class. In addition to describing platforms, some of the associated subsea and topside facilities, equipment, and structures that comprise an offshore development are introduced.

The installation of pipelines often...