Offshore Lessons Learned

CORE Report 2007-05 Offshore Technology: Lessons Learned the Hard Way Inaugural Lloyds Register Educational Trust
Lecture, Delivered by Prof Peter Marshall on 5 September 2007 in National University of Singapore
Offshore Technology: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Peter W. Marshall Department of Civil Engineering and Centre for Offshore Research & Engineering National University Singapore
ABSTRACT
Peter Marshall is an original author of many parts of the RP 2A standard for offshore platforms, and a member of the API Hurricane Evaluation & Assessment Team (HEAT). When he received the OTC 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award for individuals, the five-minute acceptance speech did not allow a full expose' on how dealing with risk has been an essential part of the offshore industry in general, and his 45-year career in particular. See I-wasthere descriptions of oil spills, blowouts & fires, collisions, hurricane survivals, structural failures, and technological blunders. Hear how industry-consensus standards extracted valuable lessons from these events, and continue to do so today.
Seams are made by automatic submerged arc welding.
KEY WORDS: Offshore technology; fixed platforms; hurricanes; blowouts; fires; collisions; tubular joints. INTRODUCTION
The first figure shows an example of the permanent fixed offshore platform, in 40 m water depth. It supports wells, a drilling rig, and oil processing equipment. A tubular space frame extends from the sea floor to just above the surface. Steel pipe piles are driven through the legs to anchor it. A superstructure deck on top supports the equipment and keeps it out of reach of wave action. Now comes the tricky part tube-to-tube structural T- Y- and Kconnections. Notice the saddle shaped cope and carefully maintained root gap. The weld geometry and position vary around the circumference. AWS D1.1 prescribes special welder qualification for this the 6GR test.
Platform fabricators roll their own, making structural steel pipe from plate, according to API Spec 2B.
Tubular frames, or bents, are welded at ground level, then tilted up to make the space frame.
CORE Report 2007-05 Offshore Technology: Lessons Learned the Hard Way Inaugural Lloyds Register Educational Trust Lecture, Delivered by Prof Peter Marshall on 5 September 2007 in National University of Singapore
The completed space frame, or jacket, is loaded onto a barge for transport and launch at sea. In the late 1960s, this technology was extended to 100m water depth
Piles are stabbed into the jacket legs, and driven with a steam or hydraulic hammer which rides on top of the pile. Welded splices and shim connections at the top of the jacket are performed in the field.
The deck is lifted on, here in three pieces, to complete the structure. Drilling and production modules are then placed on top.
and to the icy waters of Alaska.
It must be admitted that there was a lot of learning things the hard way i.e. from mistakes. Offshore pioneers had a revolutionary buccaneering spirit, and a staff of former military officers who knew how to take risks and deal with setbacks. But the 1960s were also a time when most of the basic research was done on wave forces, ice loads, laterally loaded piles, and tubular joints.
and a more visible mess on the beach. There was a huge public outcry, and a growing distrust of technology. President Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Act into law. LESSON: Public perception is very important, and politically insensitive statements can be devastating.
Human factors play a big role in technological disasters, from outer space to something as mundane as the failed levees at New Orleans.
Blowouts, fires, and collisions

These events are often beyond the control of structural designers, but nevertheless interesting to talk about. In 1969, a well being drilled from this platform (visible from shore at Santa Barbara, California) breached a fault plane which had previously been only an intermittent natural seep.
What happens when the roughneck goes to lunch and forgets to close the master valve on a live well? Oops! doesnt quite cover it. Several men were killed in the initial explosion, but the rest got off safely, albeit some with severe burns. The authors open deck structure stood up well; this picture was taken the next day.
Heavy crude from the undersea blowout made a big mess in the water
LESSON #1: Teflon seals are not heat resistant, allowing several other wells to begin leaking. LESSON #2: The safety devices of the day, storm chokes, stayed open at normal production rates. We now use SSSCSVs (subsurface, surface controlled safety valves) which fail shut. still far offshore. This deck was the authors first major project, requiring three lifts to install, and a world-record single lift to remove.
Here she comes. The second black dot is the worlds first semisubmersible, Bluewater I, moored nearby.
More oil was released here at Bay Marchand, Louisiana, than at Santa Barbara, yet there was no outcry. LESSON #3: Good Crisis management helps. Most of the oil was allowed to burn up. Too precious to waste was not yet a slogan. Skimmer booms collected much of the rest. Red Adair and his firefighting barge made good press tours. Meanwhile, rigs in the background drill relief wells to intersect the burning ones and pump them full of cement. LESSON: Drifting semi-submersibles can do serious damage.
Collisions
WD 134A platform, in 285-ft water, briefly held the world record when completed in 1965. Hurricane Betsy flooded the eastern half of New Orleans that same year. Here, in the calm before the storm, spiraling high altitude clouds foretell her approach when she was
Underwater inspection by the author in a mini-sub showed that heavily reinforced structural joints performed well; the upper brace buckled and severed well outside the connection.
Signature of a Hurricane Hilda, 1964
Circle below shows source of this found art sculpture. Some of the early platforms simply disintegrated, leaving holes in the jacket legs where the braces pulled out a plug. Research showed very high shell bending stresses at the hot spot adjacent to the connecting weld. Failures were easier to explain than sister platforms which survived. Testing showed a surprising amount of reserve strength after first yielding at the hot spot. Capacity at failure was represented by punching shear on the observed rupture surface. Putting engineers in mini-subs proved risky, as the Star I got tangled up in the wreckage on the very next dive. LESSON: Do subsea inspections with ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) instead. Swimming TV cameras send back excellent close-ups.
LESSONS FROM STORM DAMAGE

The offshore industry recently got a wake-up call from Hurricanes Ivan, Katrina, and Rita (2004-05), in which 130 or 4000 fixed platforms were lost. Hurricanes Hilda (1964), Betsy (1965), and Camille (1969) were my generations terrible trio, in which we lost 50 of 1500. LESSON (1964): A 25-year design wave has a high likelihood of being exceeded. The 100-Year Club is formed. LESSON (2007): Dj vu all over again. Those old 25-year designs should have failed.
Punching shear design criteria allowed the use of simple tubular joints, reinforced by increasing the thickness of a joint can section of the jacket leg. The first application was that 40m platform from the Introduction, 1966. The second was the 1967 world record platform at SP 62. Details were published at the first Offshore Technology Conference.
The SP 62 platform saw 80-ft (24m) waves in hurricane Camille two years later. The previous 100-year design wave was only 57 feet
(17m). Green water caused considerable damage to deck equipment.
Camille, 1969
Cost-risk economics were used to justify the criteria increase, to the API reference level used in 9th to 19th editions of RP2A. LESSON: Wave height is not the whole story.
Camille was a watershed event, stimulating a new round of research. Some 38 storms from 100 through 1969 were hindcast, with literal results from a picket line of nine sites along the edge of the continental shelf shown here in black. LESSON: The old design wave was too low. The 100-year event for anywhere in the entire NW Gulf of Mexico region was found to be 85-feet (shown in red). For a typical platform site in this region, the 100-year wave was found to be 75 feet. This increase was a hard sell. Eventually, the 9th to 19th editions, API RP2A showed a reference level wave height of 70 feet, with a guideline range of 58ft to 84-ft, and shoaling curves extending back into shallow water. This defined the modern era of platform design.
Mudslides. Camille also created massive mudslides. The square is the 5000-acre South Pass Block 70 lease, about 4 km on a side. Changes is seafloor elevation reveal a massive mudslide. Platform B in the middle of the slide was destroyed, and Platform A on the edge moved several feet. LESSON: A 70-ft wall of mud will take out a structure designed only for shallow mudflows.
Mud Slides
Yet the supporting structure stood, undamaged. Ultimate collapse analysis and survival/failure experience both showed a median load at failure of at least twice the design load. LESSON: Offshore platforms have considerable reserve strength, with plastic load redistribution giving about 40% more capacity than is accounted for by safety factors and known sources of bias.
Unstable delta muds lie in an arc 50 km east and south of Venice.
After Camille, a mini-industry grew up to define the problem and design slide-resistant platforms, and to route pipelines around the problem areas.. Nevertheless, after hurricane Ivan in 2004, newcomers to the Gulf of Mexico were surprised to see their pipelines swept away, and the Wall Street Journal called it Prof. Beas obscure theory. inclusions. LESSON: Ordinary steel is not isotropic, but more vulnerable to shrinkage strains in the thru-thickness direction. Fix: specify Zdirection tensile tests, sulfide shape control, or low sulfur steel for joint cans.
Materials Problems This heavily reinforced structural connection fractured in hurricane Hilda, yet the structurally redundant 8-pile platform stood up. LESSON: Alternative load paths structural redundancy saved the day.
Fatigue. Some of the early field failures (shown at right) appeared to be by progressive tearing, with lots of deformation, leading to an interest in low-cycle fatigue. Southwest Research Institute was investigating similar problems of plastic fatigue in pressure vessels. They tested a 40%-size structural K-connection in both ungrouted and grouted condition (shown at left).
Several authors at the first OTC showed examples of ordinary steels with their transition temperatures on the wrong side of Gulf of Mexico, failing by brittle fracture. LESSON: Minimize stress concentrations and use tougher steel in the joint cans, e.g. API Spec 2H.
Fatigue cracking and ultimate failure was correlated with hot spot strain gages adjacent to the weld toes. These gages measure local shell bending and membranes stresses, but not the notch effect of the weld itself. Post-mortem sectioning showed the connections to be surprisingly tolerant of weld root defects, and subsequent finite element analysis showed the highest local strains to be on the outside surface. Cracks due to lamellar tearing were also found in the late 1960s, during fabrication. Cracks initiated at microscopic sulfide
Failure in chord Crack in brace Hot spot Strain gage
in red, is that it is all attributable to a thickness effect, and that weld profile notches do not matter. API now considers both effects.
Fatigue test post mortem
The hot-spot S-N curve was incorporated into AWS D1.1-1972, and relaxed reject criteria for the weld root in tubular connections was incorporated into UT (ultrasonic testing) standards, e.g. API RP 2X.
Bigger and better. American fatigue criteria, cowboy technology, enabled the initial push into deeper water and harsher environments. This is the Shell-Esso North Sea Brent A platform, designed in 1974. By the time the more exhaustive European fatigue research was concluded in 1987, the offshore boom was over.
Prior to the adoption of RP 2X, a new offshore platform was condemned because UT found cracks at the weld root. This provided full size specimens for fatigue testing at the University of California. External weld profiles merged smoothly with the adjoining base metal, and low cycle fatigue tests gave excellent results.
Shells 1000-ft (300m) Cognac platform was also designed in 1974. A competitor subsequently built cheaper platforms in similar water depth, mockingly naming theirs Cerveza (beer) and Liguera (light beer).
Subsequent large scale European tests with less desirable weld profiles showed lower results, prompting API to draw a second, lower S-N curve for this case. The European interpretation, shown
Cognacs three piece installation was very complex, and never repeated. Two derrick barges in a common mooring system used special heave-compensated lowering devices. Acoustic transponders and a proprietary mooring adjustment algorithm allowed precise
positioning. Hydraylically adjustable mudmats were used for leveling. Skirt piles were driven through vertical sleeves with an underwater hydraulic hammer, and connected to the base by grouting the annulus. Large skirted mudmats provided initial stability on bottom, while skirt piles were driven by a new generation of underwater hammers.
The middle and top jacket sections were stacked on top, with the aid of shock-absorbing docking poles. Six-ft diameter, 3-in wall, 1000-ft long pins were lowered into the jacket legs and grouted, to join the three sections together. Bullwinkle is still making money as a processing and transportation hub for nearby subsea fields.
Popeye was planned as a 40-well compliant tower in 2000-ft (600m) water depth,with a topside identical to Bullwinkle. However, #3 confirmation well ruined grand visions, and the field was ultimately developed with a few subsea wells tied back to a fixed platform.
For Brent and Cognac, regulations and construction methods were being finalized during construction, resulting in cost overruns. For Bullwinkle, at Green Canyon block 65, the engineers had learned their lesson, and no steel was cut until all the engineering was done. The resulting project, with no changes, was actually faster than most fast track fiascos.
Popeye
2000-ft water
Bullwinkle was the last of the dinosaurs, installed at Green Canyon block 65 in 1988, and still holding the fixed-base water depth record at 1350-ft (400m). Its one-piece jacket weighed 50,000 tons, and was transported and launched by a purpose-build 850-ft barge.
Deeper water mega-projects are being developed with floating platforms, like this TLP (tension leg platform) at Auger. Subsea wells with tieback risers are more expensive than conventional ones, but highly permeable turbidite formations and horizontal
completions make each one more productive, so fewer wells are required.
Retirement also brought a second career designing tubular bridges.
In retrospect. Cost-risk tradeoffs were re-examined in 1987, to calibrate new random directional wave force (RDWF) technology. Todays API consequence-based criteria are shown in black. L-2 is the old 9th-19th edition optimum, still used for ordinary platforms in water depths up to 400-ft. L-1 design criteria is for highconsequence deep water projects like Bullwinkle in Green Canyon. Augers 1989 design also considered the 1000-year whammy for survival conditions. The As are for re-assessment of existing platforms, and give some slack for the different economics of dealing with existing structures. A-1 is for high-consequence economic exposure to the full hurricane population. A-2 is for human safety in sudden storms which spring up locally and do not have time to mature. A-2s do not make optimal economic risks. If ISO 19901-1 criteria were to be applied Gulf-wide, they would be equally wasteful on the conservative side.
UPDATE
Dj vu all over again. The new century found Marshall back in Houston, again doing semi-volunteer API work.
2004-2005 Ivan, Katrina & Rita
In 1993, Prof Marshall retired from Shell to take the Chair of Marine Design and Construction at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (arrow). As a transplanted Texan, he enjoyed his view of the town moor, with the Cow Hill desktop as background.
Affirmative lessons from the recent hurricanes are listed here. NO LIVES LOST during the storms, due to the industrys personnel evacuation policy. However, some workers have been killed and
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injured during the massive clean-up effort. MINIMAL POLLUTION because to the use of SCSSSV (surface-controlled, sub-surface safety valves). However, there were subsequent spills due to tankers running into the wreckage of toppled platforms. No L-1 platforms, designed to the full 100-yr criteria of the 20th & 21st editions or API RP 2A failed, and only 2% of platform designed to the lower L-2 criteria (9th-19th editions) were lost. Most of the failures were among old stripper platforms designed to earlier, still lower criteria, and having an average age of nearly 40 years The biggest economic impact was caused by extensive production shutdowns from damage to topside facilities on the offshore platforms, to the pipelines linking them to shore, and to coastal processing facilities. Onshore devastation to people and infrastructure considerably slowed the recovery. All this caused a sharp and sustained rise in energy prices, which got the attention of the public, the press, and the government. While market forces managed the shortage better than previous attempts at rationing and price control, every taxpayer who claimed auto mileage was declared a hurricane victim, and got compensation. Below is a plot of historical maximum wave heights along the 400-ft (120m) contour off the Texas and Louisiana coasts. The solid lines are old hindcasts from the Bea-Marshall 1970 study, and the dashed lines are more recent, with storm names at arrows. It should not be too surprising that extending the hindcast period by 50% produces higher historical maxima. One of nine sites exposed for 106 years would be expected to come close to the 1000-yr event. Waves higher than the general trend in a Central hot spot region could be seen in the older data, but this was attributable to randomness on the basis of Monte Carlo studies producing similar variations. Three more big wave-makers (Opel, Ivan, and Katrina) in the same deepwater region could no longer be dismissed as a fluke. However, the Gap region is still being questioned for shallow water in the shelf.
Degrees of Belief
Global warming
versus
Hurricane Alleys
versus
Random Clustering
Yesterdays 1000-yr criteria have become todays 100-yr for Central, and are still exceeded by Ivan. Yet most modern platforms survived, some as noted here.
One of the more surprising survivals was this 1965 design at MP 290, designed by Bea, Strohbeck & Marshall for a 57-ft maximum wave and having only 41.5-ft deck clearance. A 1982 pushover analysis indicated its ultimate strength load factor was less than unity for hurricane Frederick, which it survived with no damage. Waves from Ivan were much larger, and overwhelmed the deck. LESSON: Lower deck beams should have robust lateral support.
N
Ivan > 100 yr

3 kt current 91 kt wind 82 ft wave 60 ft 2D crest
There are two other possible explanations, and all three have their true believers. Al Gore became a movie star by blaming global warming for the Katrina disaster, and Berkeley Prof. Bob Bea gained notoriety by pointing out human failures in the design and maintenance of New Orleans levees. However, the one most in favor with the met-ocean community is that persistent hot water in the Gulf Loop current energizes storms as they cross over it. This was there all along, but we just did not see it until recently. LESSON: Hubris isl always with us.
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Software for ultimate strength pushover analysis has been calibrated on destructive tubular frame tests, like this one at Berkeley in the early 1980s. LESSON: When we think we know it all, confirmatory tests can still provide surprises. Plastic hinges in compact sections do not keep yielding forever, but eventually form local buckles which fracture under subsequent cycling. Struts lose capacity suddenly after reaching their column buckling load, but even a small amount of plasticity can be beneficial in load redistribution (hence the Marshall B-strut). we had lessons from Hilda, Betsy, and Camille -- and we did the basic research on storm hindcasting, wave forces, laterally loaded piles, tubular joints, fatigue and fracture, and updated RP2A annually. The Modern RP2A era is reckoned to start with the 9th edition, and the New Era is what we will end up with after the lessons of recent storms are digested.
Time-based deterioration should not be neglected in examining the failure of old platforms. This data comes from a 1966 survey of splash zone members in a large fleet of well jackets in the Gulf of Mexico, and might be useful in the absence of detailed thickness measurements. One platform failed while manned in 1984s sudden hurricane Juan, due extensive lace curtain corrosion below water. Fortunately, its condition was known, and the men survived spending the storm in warm water, with the protective gear provided.
The 155-year old lighthouse platform at Carysfort Reef, Florida, is now solar powered, and sets a remarkable precedent for modern tubular structures to follow. Failure rates in the recent storms are shown here. Fixed platforms show a steady decline in mortality as we progress through their evolutionary periods. Caissons are designed to be overwhelmed by waves, and did surprisingly well. No L-1s failed, although their old 100-year design criteria was exceeded in many cases.
Platform Performance Fixed and Caissons
48/622 7.7% Fixed
Effects of ageing - Corrosion

0 2 4 age 155 yr 6
14/283 4.9% CAS 24/450 5.3% Fixed
2/210 1.0% CAS
Pre-RP 2A
avg age 43 yr
Early-RP 2A
avg age 32 yr
20/954 2.1%
15/949 1.6% A3/L3
8 10 mm loss
3468 Platforms East of NTL Line 123 Platforms Destroyed
A2/L2
14 12
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Data as of 4/6/2007
Modern-RP 2A
avg age 13 yr
NO A1s failed !
years without maintenance
The evolution of fixed platform design criteria in API RP 2A can be traced in the parallel histories of hurricanes, design standards, and related technology developments. There is a clear legacy of lessons learned. Many pre-RP2A platforms suffered from weak joints, poor steel ductility, under-estimated wave conditions, and high assumed risks (from using 25-yr design criteria). However, without managers willing to take risks and proceed with limited knowledge, the offshore oil industry might never have started. During the early RP2A period,
Some 120 platforms failed after experiencing wave-in-deck, yet 80 survived such events. Using hindcast storm conditions and pushover analysis for each studied platform, both survivals and failures are used to perform Bayesian updating of our prior estimate of platform fragility. We see in the lower right that the uncertainty is narrowed and the distribution is shifted to the right, indication bias on the safe side. Calibrations from several storms are combined at the top left. Together, they show a bias of about 10% on the safe side more if actual wave-in-deck events are considered.
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This rig substructure walked off its skid beams and shut down 150,000 BOE/day of production from a deepwater hub for 8 months. In retrospect, the underlying physics were well understood, but not applied. Bea would have described this as a preventable failure.
Katrina and Rita 6 Cases Trying for 10-15 Cases

Individual and Combined Bias Factor 5 4 3 2 1 0 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Bias Factor
The HEAT 2006 calibration is expressed here as a platform fragility curve percent failing versus degree of overload (bottom scale) or versus the reserve strength factor (RSF) in 50-yr met-ocean conditions, used for rating API A-2 Economic (top scale). This is now based on ultimate strength rather than design load. We see a progressive reduction in the spread due to epistemic uncertainty, or the ignorance factor. BOSS-76 is the earlier calibration of Marshall & Bea, showing more uncertainty thirty years ago. The POE curve retains only the aleatory uncertainty of random wave maxima within a given seastate i.e. where we might eventually get to with perfect knowledge. Bea and others argue that too much attention to the epistemic diverts attention from humaninstitutional factors, and overstates the failure rate of the underlying technology itself. P.O.E. (pass on epistemic) is also consistent with the way North Sea safety targets were derived. The API Bull-EX example of an A-2E-85% platform can be extended to the ten worst storms over a century, yielding an average annual risk rate (AARR) of 1.9% to 3.2%. For A-2 platforms just barely passing the sudden storm safety check, exposure to the full hurricane population of the Central region yields AARR estimates of 6% to 13%. Actuarial failure rates for L2s and A2s in 2004 and 2005 ranged from 2.1% to 7.7%, depending on age. Many of the affected platforms were stronger than the A2 minimum by an unknown amount, but this useful information was not reported.
Probability of Failure
Platform A Platform B Platform C Platform D Combined Prior Platform F Platform E
A study by OTRC at Texas A&M indicated that the joke was on the rest of us. LESSONS: Wind conditions specified for combination with waves for global platform analysis understate the local extremes for topside elements. While vessel motions have always been accounted for in designing derricks and substructures on drillships and semi-submersibles, this was overlooked for rigs on compliant platforms which nominally remain level, despite dynamic lateral accelerations comparable to earthquakes. Friction tie-down clamps proved to be unreliable. Dry friction was assumed for skids that might get greasy. Uplift loads nominally balanced by gravity will increase disproportionately when the design overturning load is exceeded. Bolt re-tensioning may be neglected in the rush to evacuate before a storm. Under-design or neglect of such a small element can have huge consequences.
WG3 calibration expressed as fragility curve for A-2 Economic

Recent storms drove home the importance of subsidence in exacerbating the wave-in-deck problem. Some prolific fields have subsided as much 12 feet. In addition, the Central Gulf region also experiences slow regional subsidence due to a huge load of recently deposited Mississippi River sediments. LESSON: The 5-ft air gap does not cover this.
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way across the deck. At lower elevations, the pressures also taper off laterally, and jack-up rig designers find it advantageous to account for this. Together, these effects can account for a 3- to 5fold reduction in applied load. The boarding wave can be treated as an impulse-momentum event with a short time duration, as shown in the scaled comparison with model tests, further decreasing the effect on dynamic base shear in the jacket by a factor of up to two.
Wave-in-deck: over-estimating forces?
Wave-in Deck. The new Central hot spot met-ocean criteria raise recommended deck heights by 24 feet. A potentially contentious issue will be dealing with existing platforms with low decks. This SP8X Mystery platform suffered extensive topside equipment damage from a 68.5-ft wave crest, with 16-feet of green water impacting the deck. However, the damage was largely confined to a 90-ft section of the 160-ft long structure, indicating that this was a 3D (three dimensional) short-crested wave, rather than a 2-D longcrested one like we use for design checks. There was minor damage to the deck structure, but none to the supporting jacket structure.
Wave-In-Deck
Lateral load capacity at damage to a deck brace on SP8X allows this to be used as a full-scale wave-in deck experiment. Extremes of applied load are represented by a wheeler-stretched NU wave at the nominal hindcast crest elevation, and a higher nonlinear Chappelear wave at the observed crest.
2-D Stokes versus 3-D New Wave
The observed crest elevation is itself remarkable and instructive. It represents the one-sigma extreme of Forristalls area-based estimate of extreme crests, which is in turn larger then the traditional point estimate used with design waves. LESSONS: Areas within 15% of the traditional crest elevation should expect to get wet, and be designed for local wave impact. The 5-ft air gap should be reserved for this statistical variation, and not used up for other purposes like subsidence.
SP8X in Katrina
NU wave, 54 crest Chappelear, 69 crest
GZ Forristalls area-based crest statistics

Deck lateral resistance weld rupture at 46% of brace capacity - at total lateral load on deck of 4643 kips -
SP8X in Katrina
Features of the suspected 3-D wave are shown here. The peak dynamic wave pressure occurs over a very small area, and not all the
A summary of estimated applied wave-in-deck loads and platform resistances are shown here. LESSONS: For traditional static wave force calculation of global jacket loads, it is not unreasonable to
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ignore local crests above the nominal estimate, as shown in green. For local equipment hardening, local wave forces in the 15% + 5-ft zone should be considered, and may be used with caution for assessing the deck structure. Formal protocols for doing this are still being debated. However, to use a very steep 2-D nonlinear wave matching the local extreme crest elevation would be extreme, and is not recommended. than Katrina. However, the calibrated pushover also demonstrates ultimate capacity of 100% of A2E, which is based on using forces from the new 50-yr met-ocean conditions.
SP8X Wave-in-Deck Forces

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
API 2-D wave, Hindcast crest
Wheeler Stokes
Puskars ultimate strength push-over example
Central A1 with RSR = 1.2
A2 Economic
500
1000
2000
5000
10,000
20,000
kips
Tromans 3-D linear PWM dynamic base shear for impulsive load
Short Long
Graff 2-D Airy
API 2-D nonlinear at observed crest
old A1 WSD
PWM nonlinear 3-D at observed crest

FF FF + bottom
A2 sudden storm
Applied Resistance
GLOBAL
10% 20% 40%
LOCAL Deck bracing

min over weld weld
Jacket reserve strength beyond first damage
This information can be used with the new platform fragility curve (POE) to assess average annual risk rates (AARR) and perform economic cost-benefit analysis.
Platform Re-Assessment. Here, the black bands represent hindcast crest elevations from the recent storms, both the traditional point estimate and the most probable maximum from Forristalls areabased statistics. The red lines are the new API Interim criteria. L-1 is for new-builds in the central and more westerly regions. The As are for re-assessment in the Central region. Economically critical A1 hubs must demonstrate ultimate strength survival at 120% if the new 100-yr force level. Manned platforms are assessed at working stress design levels for the 100-yr sudden hurricane, and should be able to survive the 1000-yr unexpected event. Note the huge gap between A-1 and A-2, for which A-2 Economic sliding scale assessment is suggested.
Sliding scale assessment vs AARR

L1 (newbuild) A1 A2 E 120% A2 E 100% A2 E 85% A2 safety 0.1% 0.25% 0.5% 1% 2% 5% Central
Central Hub Full Pop Exposure

BOE/day shows benefit of upgrade to A-1
benefit = $50 x BOE x 365 x PV years x risk As is AARR 0.5% 1% 2% 5% 3,000 BOE/day $0.3 MM $1 MM $2 MM $5 MM 30,000 BOE/day $3.3 MM $10 MM $20 MM $50 MM 300,000 BOE/day $33 MM $100 MM $200 MM $500 MM
Consider re-assessment of this example platform, which actually survived hurricane Katrina. Its working-stress assessment (in green) meets A-2, but did not quite meet the old A-1. Pushover analysis suggests that it should not have survived Katrina, based on low pile strengths coming from the original soil sampling and geotechnical design methods. If one accounts for the bias factors suggested by Bea, pushover results consistent with survival are found. However, the platform still does not satisfy A-1 criteria, which is more severe
The benefit of upgrading a platform from its current state to A-1 condition is estimated above. Daily throughput in barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE) is a good measure of economic importance to the public, platform owners, and other stakeholders. Consider our example platform with 1% AARR. With a throughput of 3000 BOE, upgrades costing under $1-million would be justified, e.g. grouting the leg-pile annulus. At 30,000 BOE, more substantial upgrades would be justified, e.g. underwater replacement and joint repair clamps up to $10-million. AT 300,000 BOE, complete platform replacement costing $100,000-million would be justified.
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A graphical presentation of these same results is given here. Newbuild can be optimized as described earlier in the blue belly curves, with platforms whose criticality justified using true 100year criteria easily justifying the update. However, re-assessment of an existing platform involves making the best of a bad situation, and the curves take a belly-up form. Marshall, PW, "Problems in Long-Life Fatigue Assessment for Fixed Offshore Structures", ASCE preprint 2638, San Diego, April 1976 Marshall, PW, "Failure Modes for Offshore Structure" Proceedings BOSS-76, Vol. 2, 1976 (with RG Bea) Marshall, PW, "Failure Modes for Offshore Structures - Part II Fatigue", Methods of Structural Analysis, proceedings of ASCE conference, Madison, Aug 1976 Marshall, PW, "Preliminary Dynamic and Fatigue analysis using Directional Spectra", OTC 2537 May 1976; also Journal of Petroleum Technology, June 1977 Marshall, PW, "Inelastic Dynamic Analysis of Tubular Offshore Structures", OTC 2908, May 1977 (with W.E. Gates and Stavros Anagnostopoulos) Marshall, PW, "Analytical Methods for Determining the Ultimate Earthquake Resistance of Fixed Offshore Structures", OTC 2751, May 1977 (with W.E. Gates and S.A. Mahin) Marshall, PW, "Strategy of Monitoring, Inspection, and Repair for Fixed Offshore Platforms", Structural Integrity Technology, ASME conf. Washington DC, May 1979 Marshall, PW, "Les Comprosmis entre Cout et Risque dans le Projet et le Controle de Fracture des Plates-formes Offshore", Bulletin Technique de Bureau Veritas, June and July-August, 1980 (in French); translated from invited paper at plenary session on safety, ISSC, Paris 1979 Marshall, PW, "Fatigue Analysis of the Cognac Platform", OTC 3378, May 1979; also Journal of Petroleum Technology, March 1980 Marshall, PW, "Allowable Stresses for Fatigue Design", Proc. 3rd Int'1. Conference on Behavior of Off-Shore Structures, Boston, 1982 (with W.H. Luyties) Marshall, PW, "An Overview of Recent Work on Cyclic Inelastic Behavior and System Reliability", Proceedings, SSRC, 1982 Marshall, PW, "Experience-Based, Fitness-for-Purpose Ultrasonic Reject Criteria for Tubular Structures," Fitness for Purpose in Welded Construction, Proc. AWS/WRC/WI Conference, Atlanta, May 1982 (also Proc. 2nd Int'1. Conference on Welding of Tubular Structures, IIW, Boston, 1984) Marshall, PW, "The Cognac Fatigue Experiment", Proc. Offshore Tech. Conference, OTC 4522, May 1983 (with J. D. Burk, R. D. Larrabee, and G. Egan). Runner--up for Arthur Lubinski award Marshall, PW, "The Design-Inspection-Redundancy Triangle", in The Role of Design, Inspection, and Redundancy in Marine Structural Reliability, Proceedings of the Int'1. Conference, National Academy Press, 1984. Keynote lecture. "Limitations on the Strength of Welded Tubular Connections", Section 10.5, Structural Welding Code, AWS D1.1-72 (revised 1984 to include multi-planar joints, with commentary; also revised 1990) Marshall, PW, "Connections for Welded Tubular Structures", IIW Houdremont Lecture, also in Proc. 2nd Intl. Conference on Welding of Tubular Structures, Boston, Pergamon Press, 1984
Cost-Risk Economics
New-Build 1987
Existing 2007
CONCLUSIONS
A brief summary of results should be included in this section toward the end of the paper. So here goes
Cost-risk Tradeoffs not a dirty little secret

Necessary for the avoidance of wasteful extremes. All costs and consequences should be examined from various viewpoints -platform owners, royalty owners, upstream & downstream infrastructure dependencies all with the ethic of "fearless pursuit of truth."
REFERENCES
Marshall, PW, "Risk Factors for Offshore Structures" Proceedings, First ASCE conference on Civil Engineering in the Oceans, San Francisco, 1967; also STJ Dec. 1969. Marshall, PW, "Materials Problems in Offshore Platforms", first Offshore Technology Conference, paper OTC 1042, 1969 (with Carter, Thomas & Swanson) Marshall, PW, "Stability Problems in Offshore Structures", proc. Column Research Council, March 1970 Marshall, PW, "Basis for Tubular Joint Design Codes", ASCE Preprint 2008, San Francisco, April 1973; also published in Welding Journal May 1974.
16
Design of Fixed Offshore Structures, B. McClelland and M. D. Reifel, editors, van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1986; incl Marshall, PW Ch. 18 - Tubular Joint Design Ch. 19 - Steel Selection for Fracture Control Ch. 27 - Welding and Inspection (with Crick and Marks) Marshall, PW, "Strategies for Fatigue Design of Deepwater Platforms", Proceedings 1986 OMAE Specialty Symposium, New Orleans, January 1986 Marshall, PW, "Design of Internally Stiffened Tubular Joints", IIW-AIJ International Meeting on Safety Criteria in Design of Tubular Structures, Tokyo, July 1986 Marshall, PW, "Wave Kinematics and Force Coefficients", ASCE Structures Congress, New Orleans, September 1986 (with R.B. Inglis) Marshall, PW, "State of the Art in the U. S. A.", 3rd Intl Conference on Steel In Marine Structures (SIMS '87), Delft, June 1987; Elsevier, Amsterdam, plenary session paper #1 Marshall, PW, "Designing Tubular Connections with AWS Dl.l", Welding Journal, March 1989 Marshall, PW, "Design of Tubular Joints for Fracture and Fatigue", University of Texas short course on Design of Fixed Offshore Platforms, 1984-93 Marshall, PW, "Forces on the Cognac Platform in Combined Storm Waves and Currents" (with Forristall et al) Proc. Offshore Tech. Conf. OTC 6006, May 1989 Marshall, PW, "The Design of the Bullwinkle Platform" (with Digre and Brasted) Proc. Offshore Tech. Conf. OTC 6049, May 1989; also presented at Texas A&M, Univ. of Toronto, UC Berkeley, and Univ. of Houston. Marshall, PW, "Recent Developments in Fatigue Design Rules in the U.S.A.", in Fatigue Aspects in Structural Design, Delft Univ. Press, 1989 Marshall, PW, "Advanced Fracture Control Procedures for Deepwater Offshore Towers", Welding Journal, January 1990; also presented at AWS Annual Meeting, Anaheim CA, April 1990, and at Offshore Technology Conference (OTC 6387), May 1990. Marshall, PW, DESIGN OF WELDED TUBULAR CONNECTIONS: Basis and Use of AWS Code Provisions, Kumamoto University, Japan, June 1990; and Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 1992 ISBN: 0 444 88201 4 Marshall, PW, "The Mother of All Resilient Structures: Fixed-Base Tower in 3000-ft Water and Some Outstanding Issues" (with S. L. Smolinski), Proc. Civil Engrg in the Oceans V, Texas A&M, October 1992; also at Rice, Texas, and UC Berkeley Marshall, PW, "Screening Old Offshore Platforms: Previous Approaches and Further Thoughts", Proc. Civil Engrg in the Oceans V, Texas A&M, October 1992 Marshall, PW, Chapter 6.8, "Offshore Structures", in Bjorhovde, Dowling, et al, Constructional Steel Design: an International Guide, Elsevier Applied Science Publishers, London; also presented at Intl Conference on CSD, Acapulco, December 1992 Marshall, PW, "API Provisions for SCF, S-N, and Size-Profile Effects", Proc Offshore Tech Conf, OTC 7155, May 1993 Marshall, PW, "Back-Span Stress-Joint" (with C.D.Edwards, J.G.L.Pijfers, C.M.Webb), Proc Offshore Tech Conf, OTC 7258, May 1993 Marshall, PW, Offshore Industry Perspective on Ocean Engineering Education", Proc. American Soc. Eng'g Education, June 1993 Marshall, PW, "Offshore Concepts for 3000-ft Water depth, Gulf of Mexico", Proc. Offshore Australia conf, Melbourne, Nov. 1993 Marshall, PW, "Adaptive Standards for Structural Integrity", Proc. Offshore '94, Inst. Marine Engg. London, Feb. 1994 Marshall, PW, "100 mm Thick API 2W Grade 60 Steel Plate Produced by TMCP and its Applicability to Offshore Structures", Proc. OMAE'94 (with T. Kubo, Y.Nakano, U.Tanigawa, H.Ishii) Marshall, PW, "Re-Assessmant of Criteria for Requalification", Proc. Intl Conf on Behaviour of Off-Shore Structures, BOSS-94, Boston, July 1994 Marshall, PW, "Deepwater Development Concepts", IMarE Offshore Technology, Aug. 1994 Marshall, PW, "Overview of Tubular Connection Issues in Offshore Platform Requalification", Workshop on Requalification of Tubular Steel Joints in Offshore Structures, NIST IR 5877, Natl Inst of Stds & Tech, Sept. 1995 Marshall, PW, "Structural Design Considerations", earthquake session, Offshore Tech Conf, OTC 8107, May 1996 (with Ben Chang) Marshall, PW, "Earthquake Considerations for Structural Design", Proc BOSS-97, Delft, July 1997 Marshall, PW, "Offshore Structures" in Beskos & Anagnostopoulos, Computer Analysis and Design of Earthquake Resistant Structures, Comp Mech Pub, 1997 Marshall, PW, "Welded Tubular Connections - CHS Trusses" chapter in Chen, Handbook of Structural Engineering, CRC Press, 1997; revised for 2nd edition, 2003 Marshall, PW, "Fatigue Reassessment of the Cerveza and Cerveza Liguera Platfforms for Use in New Deepwater Developments", Offshore Tech Conf, OTC 8737, May 1998 (with R.E.Sheppard, T.M.Miller, G.S.Johnson) Marshall, PW, "Bulk Carrier Structural Integrity: Predicting Fatigue Life with Influence Functions", Proc. RINA Conf. Design & Operation of Bulk Carriers, London, April 1998 (with Braidwood, Buxton, Stevens, White, Zhu) Marshall, PW, "The Development of a Fatigue Centered Safety Strategy for Bulk Carriers", Proc. PRADS-98 Hague, Sept 1998 (with Braidwood, Buxton, Clarke, Zhu) Marshall, PW, "Yield Interaction Surface of an Enhanced LeTourneau 116C Chord," Proc. 7th Intl Conf on The Jack-Up Platform, London, 2122 Sept 1999 (with D. Lewis and D. Stock) Marshall, PW, "Improved Marshall Strut Element to Predict the Ultimate Strength of Braced Tubular Steel Offshore Structures," IMPLAST 2000, Melbourne, Australia (with K. Srirengen) Marshall, PW, "Weld Integrity for Single Pile Tendon Foundations", OMAE 2000 S&R paper 6136, New Orleans
17
(with Karsan, Pecknold & Bucknell) Marshall, PW, "Code Alternatives for ISO Earthquake Design," OMAE 2000 S&R paper 6137, New Orleans (with H. Banon) revised Aug 2003 Marshall, PW, "Capacity of Singly Symmetric Beam Columns Using Modified Stress Strain Curve," SSRC theme conference on material properties and stability issues, Memphis, July 2000 Marshall, PW, "Applications for High Performance Large Diameter Pipe," 9th Intl Symposium on Tubular Structures, Dusseldorf, April 2001 (with Bernd Berg) Marshall, PW, "ISO Seismic Guidelines for Offshore Platforms," Proc 20th OMAE, Rio de Janerio, June 2001 (with Banon, Cornell, Crouse, Nadim, Younan) Marshall, PW, "Reliability Aspects of Proposed Changes to SNAME 55A", presented at 8th Intl Jack-Up Platform Conference, London, Sept 2001 (with Rupert Hunt) Marshall, PW, "Enhanced Strain-based Design of Tubular Piling and Pipelines", Proc SSRC Annual Tech Session, Baltimore, April 2003 (extended version dist by internet) Marshall, PW, "Review of Tubular Joint Criteria, AISC-ECCS Connections Workshop, Amsterdam, June 2004 Marshall, PW, The New API RP2A 22nd Ed. Tubular Joint Design Practice, OTC 17236, Proc. Offshore Tech Conf, Houston, May 2005 Marshall, PW, Background to New API Fatigue Provisions, OTC 17295, Proc. Offshore Tech Conf, Houston, May 2005 (with Bucknell & Mohr) Marshall, PW, New API RP 2A Tubular Joint Strength Design Provisions, OTC 17310, Proc. Offshore Tech Conf, Houston, May 2005 (with Pecknold & Bucknell) Marshall, PW, Tubular versus Non-Tubular Hot Spot Stress Methods, Proc ISOPE-2005, Seoul, paper 391-JW-02 (with Wardenier), June 2005 Marshall, PW, Interdisciplinary Aspects of Offshore Platforms, MTS Journal, Fall 2005 Marshall, PW, Material Selection and Fracture Control for Offshore Structures, Proc. ISOPE-2006, San Francisco, May 2006 Marshall, PW, Cost-Risk Tradeoffs a Dirty Little Secret? U.Calif, Berkeley lecture Feb 2006; API HEAT June 2006 Marshall, PW, Interdisciplinary Aspects of Cost-Risk Trade-offs, Proc. MTS-IEEE Oceans 06, Boston, Sept. 2006 Marshall, PW, Assessing Risk and Reliability for Large vs. Many SmallProjects, Proc Offshore Asia, Kaula Lumpur, Jan.2007 (with YS Choo)
18

Offshore Lessons Learned

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CORE Report 2007-05 Offshore Technology: Lessons Learned the Hard Way Inaugural Lloyds Register Educational Trust

Offshore Technology: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Seams are made by automatic submerged arc welding.

and to the icy waters of Alaska.

Blowouts, fires, and collisions

LESSONS FROM STORM DAMAGE

Unstable delta muds lie in an arc 50 km east and south of Venice.

Fatigue test post mortem

Retirement also brought a second career designing tubular bridges.

2004-2005 Ivan, Katrina & Rita

Ivan > 100 yr

Effects of ageing - Corrosion

14/283 4.9% CAS 24/450 5.3% Fixed

2/210 1.0% CAS

15/949 1.6% A3/L3

3468 Platforms East of NTL Line 123 Platforms Destroyed

years without maintenance

Katrina and Rita 6 Cases Trying for 10-15 Cases

Platform A Platform B Platform C Platform D Combined Prior Platform F Platform E

WG3 calibration expressed as fragility curve for A-2 Economic

Wave-in-deck: over-estimating forces?

GZ Forristalls area-based crest statistics

SP8X Wave-in-Deck Forces

Puskars ultimate strength push-over example

Central A1 with RSR = 1.2

Graff 2-D Airy

API 2-D nonlinear at observed crest

PWM nonlinear 3-D at observed crest

LOCAL Deck bracing

Jacket reserve strength beyond first damage

Sliding scale assessment vs AARR

Central Hub Full Pop Exposure

Cost-risk Tradeoffs not a dirty little secret

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