The PMI team had a busy August having attended the ONS 2018 Conference in Stavanger, Norway. The conference not only provided a chance to connect with industry professionals, government officials, and catch up with clients, but also to learn more about what’s shaking up the market.
Innovation is the name of the game
Cost reduction through innovation was a common theme throughout the conference. More technological breakthroughs and policies are changing, providing the momentum oil and gas (O&G) industries need to continue to grow, evolve, and stay relevant. A number of ONS attendees were exhibiting alternative forms of energy including wind and wave.
One of the hottest topics of conversation was Equinor’s proposed plans to build the Hywind Tampen floating wind park. This park plans to reduce carbon emissions on Equinor’s oil and gas platforms. This kind of project displays some of the innovative ways the oil and gas industry is working to incorporate wind — especially floating wind projects — as a form of energy for offshore platforms. Offshore wind farms in the North Sea may be seeing more floating wind projects in their future.
Market conditions
A lot of discussions were also centered on O&G market conditions as the renewable fuel industries are now some of the fastest growing sectors. From our perspective, the majority of attendees felt there was a slight uptick in the market, but others had a more reserved outlook.
In addition, several seismic companies indicated an increase in activity, while other companies mentioned rounds of layoffs. It may be too soon to tell the ultimate trajectory of these markets, but we’re enlivened to see companies with new forms of energy coming to the table with creative solutions to today’s energy challenges.
PMI has been a key supplier for many companies within the oil and gas market, for nearly half a century. We offer full-service engineering from concept to production and provide cable protection and management systems for oil and gas and renewable energy projects.
While some other suppliers have closed doors, PMI has weathered the swings in market conditions by providing quality cable protection and terminations for our clients’ most demanding applications. This quality is what continues to set us apart from other suppliers.
PMI also stands alone in our low-hassle, no-tools-required cable protection assembly systems. Whereas other products, such as terminations, may require up to 12 hours to cure, PMI’s terminations can be completely assembled and ready to go in just 30 minutes.
Our experience working with projects across all sectors — oil and gas, wind, and wave energy — allows PMI to be an invaluable resource to our clients in all stages of their project development. In a world of tight timelines and budgets, PMI strives to create the cable protection systems that can remove the headaches and wasted time and energy so engineers can focus on their biggest project goals — not get caught up in cable complications. After all, about 80% of all project disruptions come from cable failures.
We’re always excited to attend ONS and it was a great opportunity to connect with some of our current clients and leaders from around the world. (PMI’s team even had the opportunity to meet with the U.S. Ambassador to Norway and mayors of Stavanger Bergen!). We look forward to seeing even more of our clients and connecting with leading industry professionals at several more of this year’s upcoming conferences.
A new ship in the fleet of Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) suggests low oil prices haven’t closed the spigot of innovation in deep ocean engineering.
A naming ceremony in Nagasaki, Japan, in mid-March celebrated PGS’s acquisition of the Ramform Tethys, a new seismic data acquisition ship that’s brimming with the latest 3D and 4D technology for seismic projects that bounce sound waves off the sea floor to find untapped supplies of crude oil.
Built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Shipbuilding at a cost of $285 million, the Tethys is the third Ramform Titan-class vessel in the PGS fleet; the first two were finished in 2013-2014 and the fourth will come to sea in 2017. Titan-class ships have a distinctive triangular hull that’s 104 meters long and 70 meters wide at the stern — the widest hulls currently at sea, PGS says. The extra-wide stern looks a bit odd on the sea, but it has huge benefits for towing streams of sensor arrays and providing extra stability for the crews scanning the data pouring in from those arrays.
“The Ramform Tethys like her Ramform Titan-class sisters is well adapted to the prevailing economic environment,” PGS says on its website. “Her operational cost per streamer is the lowest around, while the resolution and reliability of the dual-sensor, broadband GeoStreamer data she produces is by far the best currently available.”
The Titan-class ships in the PGS fleet use an impressive amount of underwater cable hardware. The Tethys can carry 24 streamer reels: 16 reels aligned abreast and 8 reels further forward, with capacity for 12-kilometer streamers on each reel. That enables an array with hundreds of thousands of sensors spread over an area of 12 square kilometers — nearly 3,000 acres or more than triple the size of New York’s Central Park.
The new ship makes it faster and easier to deploy and retrieve cable hardware for subsea explorations. That allows surveys to be completed much sooner and ships to stay at sea longer in the calm times between ever-present storms on the high seas. That equals greater efficiencies that can be passed along to PGS clients.
“Productivity, safety, stability and redundancy are the key benefits of these vessels,” said Per Arild Reksnes, executive vice president for operations at PGS, which is based in Norway. “Their ability to tow many streamers gives high data quality with dense cross-line sampling and cost-efficient acquisition with wide tows.”
The Ramform Tethys has six engines producing 26.4 megawatts of power, and carries over 6,000 tons of fuel and equipment. The fact that companies are still buying ships of this size and complexity demonstrates that even with severe economic challenges across the oil sector, people will still see the wisdom of investing in better technology.
Discover how other Oil & Seismic companies are finding ways to save on fuel and cost in our Free Hydrodynamic Efficiency report.
Operators and suppliers in the offshore oil and gas industry face major challenges as the industry matures: increased production losses, technical issues with legacy equipment, evolving business models for maintenance and repair, supply chain constraints, rising delivery costs, and an inability to improve production.
Companies are even putting off recruiting apprentices because of the time and cost involved in what is perceived as a complex process. That why it’s good news to hear that Subsea UK has launched a new support service to help companies bring new talent into the subsea sector by making it easier to recruit apprentices. That’s one solution to the many the industry face.
And while Subsea UK is helping on the employment front, we’re focused on the other issues – constantly working on new to improve cost efficiencies. One way we are doing this is by innovating news systems on existing subsea cable devices and analyze cost saving opportunities.
Our in-depth hydrodynamic efficiency studies are helping companies by optimizing performance and overcoming hydrodynamic drag by over 40%.
Reduce some of your major challenges today:
Discover the benefits of Hydrodynamic Efficiency in this free whitepaper.
Learn about Subsea UK Recruitment Drive
PMI has grown up with the oil industry. In 1969, we emerged in the underwater market by introducing the helical wire concept for use on underwater cables. And today, we offer full-service engineering from concept to production, cable hardware and kits, custom cable systems and simulated at-sea testing services.
The recent trend in oil prices casts a shadow of uncertainty on many industries like ours across the globe. But news of a Norwegian oil field has us all perking up a bit.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has given the go ahead on the development and operation plan of the oil group Statoil for Johan Sverdrup field. It’s the fifth largest oil field to ever be found off the Norwegian cost. And it looks as if it is expected to generate $200 billion in revenues within the next 50 years and create 51,000 direct and indirect jobs, which is especially important for Norway – not to mention the entire oil industry — these days.
Read more about our thoughts on Oil and Gas Exploration.
Read more about Norway’s Development of Largest Oil Field.
Cost-saving mode is not the best time for trial projects. Instead, it’s an opportunity to drive innovative ways to reduce cost. At PMI, we are focused the potential to save on operating costs by simply considering the hydrodynamic efficiency of your cable hardware.
Sinking profits could be a good trigger to reconsider the drilling and completion “basis of design” and look for alternative and innovative ways to reduce cost and increase production. Read more and discover other cost saving ideas to brainstorm.
Oil energy and renewable energy are two totally different marketplaces, generating two different products used in different ways. As different as they may be, they still require the same equipment – rugged subsea grips, hangers, and terminations – with the same goal: extending service life and maintaining integrity in extreme underwater environments.
They operate in different markets. Oil is predominantly used for transport—cars, trucks, planes. Very little of it is used for power; oil accounts for less than 1 percent of power generation in the United States and Canada, for example, and not much more in Europe. Globally, the figure is around 5 percent. Renewables, in contrast, are used mostly to create electricity. The more important factor for renewables, then, is not the price of oil, but the price of electricity, and the latter is not entirely a function of the cost of fuel. The electrical grid itself is expensive, which is why US power costs, which are relatively low in global terms (an average of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour), have been rising. In Europe and Japan, electricity costs are significantly higher, and the relative position of renewables is correspondingly better. Read more…
Prior to the show, Gordon Drummond was quoted, saying: “In the current low oil price environment, innovation and technology will be more important than ever in driving efficiencies and developing effective solutions to the challenges the industry presently faces, particularly in the North Sea.”
Driving technology in subsea cable applications is what we do. Our cable hardware solutions deliver efficiencies and provide exceptional return on investment.
New technologies, and how their implementation can boost oil and gas exploration, was brought to the forefront at this year’s Subsea Expo.
For the first time, Subsea UK’s annual conference and exhibition, which took place from February 11-13, provided a platform for organizations to introduce, discuss and demonstrate their latest innovations. Read more…
The launch of the Ramform Titan class marine seismic data acquisition ships by Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) mark a new era of subsea oil and gas exploration. The second of these vessels, the Ramform Atlas was launched in January, 2014. The Ramform Titan and Ramform Atlas are designed and built by PGS to be the most powerful and productive of their kind using the latest marine and electronic seismic technologies.
Every detail of these vessels was evaluated based on optimum productivity and safety including the cable management systems used to deploy and attach up to a 24-streamer array system. The towed streamers consist of several thousand recording sensors over an area greater than 3,000 acres (12 km2), or 3.5 times the size of New York’s Central Park.
The engineers at PGS have chosen the latest proven technologies available throughout the Ramform Titan-class ships, including the new PMI Dyna-Hanger II and Dyna-BSR cable management systems. These systems provide significantly higher load capacities to accommodate the demands of extreme towing loads caused by wider streamer arrays. As a bonus, the major components of both systems can be installed, or removed, in just minutes without special tools or extensive personnel training to increase on deck productivity and reduce downtime.
The Dyna-Hanger II cable management system uses exclusive patent pending designed symmetrical suspension arms with tool-less features and helical rods. It is designed with a hinged collar that snaps around the housing and is secured with just a quick-release pin. A specially designed housing prevents the attachment point from shifting on the lead-in cable while the collar design enables the cable to rotate freely under tension. It is capable of accommodating loads up to 100% of the cable’s rated breaking strength.
The Dyna-BSR bending strain relief system provides cable bending and abrasion protection, while enabling rotation of various cable attachments. It replaces traditional slip-on bending strain relief systems that use a one-piece body design. Instead, the Dyna-BSR patent pending two-piece system can be installed or removed at any time during deployment or retrieval procedures. It is designed with a reinforced polyurethane, two-part shell to provide added strength and flexibility. A unique fastener system quickly secures the shells together. In total, the system offers graduated stiffness to protect cables from off-axis loads through a wide range of angle combinations by maintaining a safe minimum bend radius.
“Everything on the Ramform Titan class was chosen for its contribution to our primary goals of providing optimal seismic productivity and crew safety,” according to Sverre Olsen, Technical Manager at PGS. “Every sub-system we have, builds on the total system to achieve our goals. PMI systems were chosen because they continue to meet PGS productivity and higher load requirements.”
“The successful PGS installation is a result of our conversations with customers about their challenges then developing cable hardware and support services to meet their needs,” said Bob Schauer, president, PMI industries. “We are focused on unmatched support for our customers. Whether it is easy-to-use hardware, engineering support or comprehensive cable testing services, we listen and then perform.
