SHELL WINS PRESTIGIOUS “EXCELLENCE IN PROJECT INTEGRATION” AWARD

The Award was in recognition of the significant and unique achievements made by Shell Brasil’s BC-10 Parque das Conchas Team, in successfully managing and directing an integrated oil and gas project from discovery to production, using breakthrough technology solutions.

Albert Paardekam, BC-10 Development Manager, accepted the Award on behalf of the team from the Executive Committee Chairman of the IPTC, and President and CEO, PTT Exploration and Production Plc, Anon Sirisaengtaksin.. iptc

Commenting on the Award, Vice President Deepwater Production and Development, Shell Brasil, Kent Stingl said, "Shell is honoured to be recognized by a committee of our peers with this prestigious Award. The Parque das Conchas project is testament to strong relationships and shared values – a true partnership of Shell and its JV partners Petrobras and ONGC who have been capable of creating a successful project, delivering several hundred millions of barrels of oil, where this was hitherto considered impossible.

We are proud of the many technologies this project advanced, the jobs it created and the investment it spurred.” Stingl paid tribute to the team for delivering the highly complex Parque das Conchas project, on time, on budget, without compromising on Shell’s high safety and environmental standards.

The BC-10 Parque das Conchas is an ultra-deepwater heavy oil development offshore Brazil. The project was the result of a nine year effort to unlock very challenging reserves, requiring the development and successful deployment of several technology firsts. It is the first of its kind based fully on subsea oil and gas separation and subsea pumping.

The IPTC Excellence in Project Integration Award Competition is held as part of the Conference, to recognize the management of large scale oil and gas project integration, development and application of innovative technology, while upholding high health, safety, security and environmental standards. It is adjudicated by an independent Award Committee comprising 10 distinguished members from the energy industry and academia.

The Award Committee had shortlisted four projects as finalists from the many nominations it received the world over. Two of the four finalists were Shell-led projects. Along with the Shell Brasil Parque das Conchas project was Brunei Shell Petroleum Co. Sdn Bhd., which was recognized for its successful Seria Field Rejuvenation Project in Brunei.

Notes to editors

About the Parque das Conchas Project

The Parque das Conchas project, is located in ultra-deepwater block BC-10 in the northern Campos basin offshore Brazil and is one of Shell’s most challenging deep-water projects. Shell has a 50% interest in the project and is the operator. The full project delivers an energy resource of approximately 300 million barrels of oil equivalent, with facilities production capacity of some 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Shell has been a technology pioneer for more than 100 years and a leader in deep-water exploration and production for 30 years.

The challenges:

• The oil is distributed over several small reservoirs located under the seabed in water depths up to 1800m. The combination of a relatively thin overburden and the requirement to drill long horizontal wells to connect the sand packages pulled the most out of subsurface and well engineers to design and drill the required number of wells whilst minimizing the number of drill centers.
• Most of the oil is heavy with API gravity ranging from 16 to 24 with one small accumulation carrying a 42 API oil. The combination of deep water and heavy oil puts significant challenges on flow assurance aspects to make sure the oil flows at all, rather than ‘freeze’ on the seabed.

The technology:

• Subsea separation: Due to the low pressure in these relatively shallow reservoirs, artificial lift has to be applied to pump the oil to the surface. This required oil and gas separation technology on the seabed to overcome multi-phase flow pumping and compression issues.
• High voltage control umbilicals: The power requirements of these so-called caisson Electrical Submersible Pumps (C-ESP’s) required the development of multi-circuit High Voltage Electro-Hydraulic (HV/EH) control umbilicals in a single cross-section.
• Lazy wave risers: A steel lazy wave riser is a steer catenary riser that has buoyancy added to decouple the dynamic motion of the floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) at the touch down point to the riser. By doing so the fatigue life of the riser is significantly increased. It is the first time steel lazy wave risers were hung-off a turret moored FPSO, which had to be designed to receive, process and offload the heavy oils and generate the high power required for the subsea boosting systems.
• Surface Blow Out Preventer (SBOP): The drilling and completion was executed with a moored generation 3 type rig that was upgraded to utilize SBOP technology. The upgrade essentially doubled the water depth capabilities of the rig and resulted in significant cost savings relative to a generation 4/5 dynamically positioned drilling unit.

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