Local content reached an all-time high on Total’s CLOV project offshore Angola, with many of the key fabrication jobs being carried out in country, according to the “CLOV Angola Project” technical session held Monday morning at OTC 2015.

Some 25% of the overall budget was targeted at local content, with half of the work on the subsea umbilical, risers and flowlines (SURF) package carried out locally. CLOV comprises the Cravo, Lirio, Orquidea and Violeta fields and is Total’s fourth large-scale development in golden Block 17.

As with the previous three, it is based around an FPSO vessel and an extensive subsea production system. Production started in June 2014, with capacity of 160,000 bbl/d of oil. “Local content is a necessity and part of our unwritten contract with the country,” said Francois Bichon, CLOV project manager. “You have to know and be able to demonstrate what is achievable and what is not realistic. It was deemed feasible to achieve 10 million man hours in Angola. That was three times more than on our previous project at Pazflor.

“For this to be achieved, it would require a large extension of Angolan yards and in particular Paenal, which was to berth the first FPSO [unit] in Angola for integration work,” he added.

The aim was to fabricate 64,000 tons of structures in five domestic construction yards. Bichon said it was essential to ensure that yard development and manpower recruitment remained on schedule, while Total also initiated an innovative training program for the project.

For the SURF package, fabrication and assembly of production and water-injection lines, work on the gas export line as well as riser towers was carried out at the Sonamet yard in Lobito. Fabrication of umbilicals was done at Angoflex in Lobito.

The SURF element of the project required three hybrid riser towers, nearly 100 km (62 miles) of infield flowlines plus a 32-km (20-mile) gas export line, while the subsea production system of 34 wells—19 producers and 15 water injectors—is typical of systems employed by Total in West Africa.

The integration of a module for the FPSO vessel was done at the Paenal yard, another first for Angola.

CLOV, in water depths of 1,100 m to 1,400 m (3,609 ft to 4,593 ft), benefited from lessons Total had learned on its three earlier projects, Girassol, Dahlia and Pazflor.

The heavy oil reservoirs of Orquidea and Violeta need pressure and flow support and require the use of both a large water-injection scheme (six subsea water injectors) that makes use of produced water from the FPSO vessel and the installation of a seabed multiphase pumping (MPP) system based on helico-axial pumps, former CLOV project director, Genevieve Mouillerat said.

The application of the MPP system also was an element in the overall flow assurance program and the cost-reduction exercise on the project. Its use reduced the number of the looped flowlines with the furthest well located 15 km (9 miles) from the FPSO vessel.

The original plan for CLOV was to have 11 production wells and four water injectors at the time of first oil, but only nine producers were required to hit 168,668 bbl/d on Oct. 2, 2014.

Mouillerat said the FPSO vessel is a purpose-built unit of 305 m by 61 m (1,001 ft by 200 ft) and has a topside of 37,000 tons. It can hold 1.78 MMbbl of oil.

It uses an all-electric power system with variable speed drives and also makes use of the “wash tank” technique for oil-water separation. Both are firsts on projects developed by Total.

Total operates Block 17 with a 40% stake on behalf of Sonangol (concessionaire), alongside Statoil (23.33%), Exxon Mobil (20%) and BP (16.67 %).

Offshore