From Offshore Europe 2013, Aberdeen: While everyone has been intent on listening to everything that Statoil has been saying about its vaunted ‘subsea factory’ vision of the future (SEN, 29/12), Total has been beavering away on its own ‘all singing, all dancing’ - and all-electric - version.

Speaking at the SUT’s West Africa session in the ‘Deepwater Zone’, Fabrice Arnaud, Total’s veep for technology and production in its Africa division, gave a glimpse of three of its own technology development programmes including DEPTH.

No one should be surprised at what Total is doing. It sits at the top table - with Statoil and Petrobras - of those unafraid of the challenges on the seabed.

Just look at what it has done in the deepwaters of Angola and Nigeria in the last decade - Girassol, Dalia, Rosa and Pazflflfl or in the former country and Usan and Akpo in the latter - with CLOV and Egina coming soon.

Electrifying

The DEPTH - deep export production treatment hub - programme is focused on deepwater gas and has a number of elements that include an all-electric production system - now we know where Total was headed when it took on the Cameron DC system for the Dutch sector trial – with gas/liquid separation, subsea gas compression, subsea chemical storage, local power generation, HIPPS and a simplified umbilical.

But this is just one of three programmes and is, in fact, the furthest from implementation. Coming first will likely be the SPRINGS subsea raw water injection project which is to be installed first at Moho Nord. The object is desulphurisation (<40ppm) of the produced water to allow it to be used in most types of reservoir. A key piece of technology is a self-cleaning filter membrane.

Also on the cards is SWIMMER, a workclass auv. This has been talked about for some time, but Total has a plan to deploy the technology at Kaombo, its next big Angola deepwater development. This field is so big - 50km by 80km - that it will require two fpso’s to develop it.

SWIMMER would be installed on the seabed in its own docking station between the two floaters and eliminate the need for a field support vessel with rovs. It is also expected to be part of DEPTH.

While much of the focus was about deploying new technology, Total has another big issue to confront - how can it re-use its ‘fleet’ of fpso’s when the fields where they are located come to the end of their production lives?

Arnaud spoke mostly about the future, but Dave Brookes of BP looked back at what his company has learned during the slog to bring Blocks 18 and 31 onstream in Angola.

Some of the issues he mentioned were not exactly new - ie, accurate, but unreliable multiphase meters and reliability of subsea electronics modules - but also a new one - internal flow induced vibration in the flowlines, partially the result of a mitigation plan for upheaval buckling.

Plus the rising cost of subsea equipment which in Block 31 (PVSM) reached a staggering one-third of the total capex on the project.

The good news from BP’s point of view is that there is more oil to get out of the ground. It already has an infill drilling programme (15 wells) in Block 18.

And DB reiterated what everyone really knows - how do you ensure that your subsea hardware is reliable? Test, test, test.