When the pendulum swings

Installing the massive TPG 500 production platform in the Shah Deniz gas field earlier
this year required a set of highly innovative engineering solutions, developed by BP
and its partners, to match the unique challenges posed by the Caspian Sea. Terry
Knott reports on the details of how it was done
In October, natural gas began to flow from deep below the Caspian Sea to bring new supplies of energy to the people of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.
The source of that gas is the Shah Deniz field translated to mean the King of the Sea. And a king among gas fields it truly is.

Shah Deniz is a world class hydrocarbon resource, says Pat McHugh, project director for the Shah Deniz gas export development led by BP. It is a
giant gas condensate field with an estimated one thousand billion cubic metres of gas in place, and is also the largest gas discovery ever made by BP.
With such large gas volumes it is of strategic importance to the region, and will provide stable energy supplies to millions of consumers for many years to
come.

The field, located in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea some 100km southeast of the capital Baku, was discovered in 1999, and ranked as the
worlds largest gas discovery in that decade. At plateau in the period 2010 to 2021, 25 million cubic metres of gas will be delivered to shore from the field
each day through a new 93km-long, 660mm diameter pipeline, alongside which a 300mm line will carry up to 65,000 barrels of condensate liquids.
Onshore, the gas and condensate will be processed at the Sangachal terminal near Baku, from where gas will be exported through the new 686km-long,
1000mm diameter South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), running to the Turkish border with offtakes in Azerbaijan and Georgia. The condensate will be
exported through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan trunkline, already in operation carrying oil from the nearby BP-operated Azeri, Chirag and Gunashli (ACG)
fields to the Mediterranean Sea, covering a distance of 1768km (Frontiers, December 2005).

Delivering gas from Shah Deniz has required a $4.5 billion investment to develop the field and facilities, reflecting the scale and importance of this
energy resource, adds McHugh. The SCP, onshore facilities at Sangachal, offshore pipelines and drilling the wells account for about two thirds of the
total. The other third has provided the offshore production platform, the first of its kind in the Caspian, and one which brought with it a new set of
engineering challenges.

The platform he refers to is a TPG 500, a proprietary design by leading engineering and construction contractor, Technip of France.
The TPG 500 is a large scale, permanently installed jackup platform, explains McHugh. Our selection of this solution for Shah Deniz was influenced by
the fact that the Shah Deniz project was running in parallel with the multi-platform ACG development, and construction resources in the Caspian would
be stretched. Two of the beneficial features of the TPG design are that it does not require heavy lifts offshore, and furthermore it lends itself to being
fabricated in component parts which can then be brought together for final assembly, which is what we did in Baku for Shah Deniz.

Technips TPG 500 design for Shah Deniz is centred on a large three-legged production, drilling and accommodation jackup platform, in all weighing
almost 33,000 tonnes (t). The jackup is installed over a 15-slot drilling template in 101m of water, above the Shah Deniz gas reservoir.

The TPG 500 platform hull, with its 135m-long legs in raised position, at the Zykh construction yard

The main assembly location for the platform was the Zykh construction yard on the outskirts of Baku, owned by Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR
one of the seven equity partners in the development and operated by Technip subsidiary Technip Marine Offshore Limited for the project. While Zykh
acted as the assembly yard, several other players contributed to building the TPG 500 materials and equipment were sourced from 28 countries.

The landlocked and relatively remote location of the Caspian demands that most materials and equipment be shipped to the region through the canal
systems of Europe and Russia, placing constraints on size and adding logistics challenges.

In Singapore, Keppel Fels fabricated the platforms 22,400t hull in four large strips, explains McHugh. These were shipped via the Suez Canal, Black
Sea and canal systems to Baku where they were joined together in a floating dry dock by the Caspian Shipyard Company. From here the hull was towed
across the bay to Zykh. Keppel Fels also built three wellhead modules and two large production manifold modules, while the drilling derrick and
modules, designed by KCA in Aberdeen, were fabricated by Nymo in Norway. But some large items were built in Baku, including the flare boom at the
ATA yard, and indeed the three jackup legs at Zykh these are 135m long and weighed over 6100t in all.

Following two years assembly and construction at Zykh, the platform was completed at the yards quayside in March this year.

The workforce peaked at 3600 people at Zykh, notes McHugh. During the last 18 million construction manhours worked across the different yards, we
had no lost time accidents an exemplary safety record.

Carrying the can

The TPG 500 for Shah Deniz is the third of its kind to be built and installed to date. The first was for BPs Harding field in the North Sea, which came on
stream in 1996 McHugh led the Harding business unit at the time of this pioneering project while the second is located in Totals Elgin-Franklin
development, also in the North Sea, coming into operation in 2001. The concept of using a three-legged jackup has been the basis of all three, but there
have been fundamental differences Harding was installed on top of a concrete storage tank on the seabed, while Elgin-Franklin achieved self-
installation directly onto the seabed, supported on relatively small, piled foundation cans at the bottom of each leg.

The situation we faced in the Caspian for Shah Deniz was entirely different from the previous two TPGs, observes Bill Smith, responsible for
transportation, installation, hookup and commissioning of the platform. Ideally we would have mated the cans with the legs at the construction yard,
towed the completed platform to the field, and jacked down the legs. But the seabed at the field location was found to be very soft in relation to the
heavy load of the TPG 500 you could say the seabed was effectively like yoghurt in consistency.
As a result we needed very large foundation cans at the base of the legs which would penetrate deep into the seabed during installation to provide a
stable foundation for the structure. And the size of these cans meant we could not install them onto the legs at the quayside in Zykh due to limited water
depth there. We were faced with finding another solution, and in a short time-scale of only 18 months to implementation.

The three steel foundation cans partly built at the Caspian Shipyard Company, and finalised at Zykh are enormous. Each one is 30m in diameter,
12m high and weighs 1500t as Smith points out: You could drive a double-decker London bus around inside them. With the legs installed in the hull
and the platform floating on water, the challenge facing the project was how to mate the cans with the bottom of the legs, attach them permanently, and
then control their penetration into the seabed.

A controlled penetration is essential, says Jean-Claude Naudin, Technips project manager for the Shah Deniz installation and co-inventor of the TPG
500 concept. A typical accident that can be encountered with a jackup is when sudden punch through occurs as a can breaks through a soft soil layer
under one of the legs and the jackup becomes unstable the seabed at Shah Deniz posed this problem. This was just one of many challenges we had
to handle.

Technip and BP worked closely together to determine the unique installation solution for Shah Deniz, requiring the development of a detailed
engineering programme for first mating the cans and legs in an offshore location, and subsequently safely installing the platform no heavy lift crane
vessels were available in the Caspian to assist the operation. Verification of the proposed methods, never tried before, involved extensive model testing
in some of Europes largest marine test tanks and sophisticated computer simulations of all aspects of the operation.

The first stage was to transport the cans to an offshore mating site. Each can consists of a 4m upper section, containing seven ballast tanks for
controlling ascent or descent in water, plus an 8m-deep bottom section the bottom skirt section is open to the sea. Mounted on top of the cans is a
multitude of valves and pipework plus ballast pumps, a locking system for attachment of the legs, and an associated control unit.

Although the cans would float in water, ensuring that they would maintain a stable position during the long tow to the mating site some 70km offshore
in 70m of water required some clever thinking, as Steve Makin, BPs lead project engineer for the operation, explains.

Consider each can to be like a cup, says Makin. Turned upside down and held in water, it would trap an air bubble underneath it. But if you remove
your hand, the air bubble tries to escape and capsizes the cup. Although the cans are far more stable than this when floating, this could happen to them
in some sea conditions, hence we needed a method to hold them steady in the water to prevent overturning.

The cost-effective solution developed by the team centred on the use of a purpose-built cradle to stabilise the cans during transportation. Designed by
Technip and built at the Bos Shelf SPS fabrication yard near Baku in less than eight months, the cradle was in effect a submersible barge consisting of
three 15m-high vertical flotation tanks held together by a tubular frame. Each can would be placed into the cradle between the tanks and held steady. As
the can would be floating on an air cushion, the size and structural strength of the cradle could be optimised, allowing the 34m-long, 40m-wide cradle to
be lightweight 600t to assist fabrication within the tight time frame. Once completed, the cradle was put through its paces in offshore stability trials.

Lifting each can from the quayside and into the cradle in the water brought its own challenge Zykh does not have the capacity to lift 1500t structures.
Ten months before the lifting operation was to take place, work began to reinforce the quayside with 40m-long piles and concrete pads to act as the
foundations for a temporary crane. That crane was a Mammoet MSG 50, one of the largest onshore cranes in the world with the capacity to lift up to
2500t.

We brought the crane into Azerbaijan from Saudi Arabia in 100 rail containers, says Smith. It took six weeks to erect the crane at the Zykh yard.

The giant Mammoet crane was installed at the Zykh quayside to lower the foundation cans into the
transportation cradle

On 11 March this year, the first of the cans was lifted by the Mammoet into the cradle, floating in 7m of water at the quayside. Once the can was in place,
four hydraulic clamps on the flotation tanks were activated to lock the can into place and take up any free movement between cradle and can. The
loaded cradle was then towed at 5.5m draft on its 14-hour voyage to the mating site. Once here, the cradles flotation tanks were ballasted to submerge
the joined structures to a draft of about 10m, giving the can added buoyancy, at which point the hydraulic clamps were released to allow the can to
gently bob up and float freely at the surface. Tugs moved the structures apart, with the can then being secured by a mooring line to a pre-installed
anchor buried some 20m into the seabed.

The cradle was deballasted by air compressors mounted on top of the flotation tanks and returned to shore for collection of the next can. All three cans
were parked at the mooring site at a draft of 10m for several weeks prior to the mating operation, under the surveillance of a guard ship and satellite
monitoring.

Transporting the cans was a great success, adds Makin. But as with all other stages of the overall platform installation, we ensured that our methods
were always reversible, so that had anything gone wrong, we could pick up a can in the cradle offshore and take it back to the yard if necessary.

Pendulum performance
On 10 April, the fully commissioned and operating Shah Deniz jackup left the quayside at Zykh, towed by two tugs to the mating site to begin an offshore
operation estimated to have an overall duration of 19 days. Good weather was needed for the one-day voyage, and hoped for in the subsequent
offshore operation. As accurate weather forecasting in the Caspian is limited to only a few days in advance, significant effort went into computer
simulation and tank model testing of all stages of the operation to ascertain the platforms survivability in storm conditions offshore, with the cans
attached, the 8m-deep hull would float with only 2m of freeboard, leading to large green water panels being temporarily added around the 88m by 75m
hull to prevent damage from possible wave impacts.

As it turned out, the hull and parked cans were hit by storms and survived undamaged, putting the designs to the test for real, notes Smith. We had
installed wave radar buoys and current meters offshore two years ago to start building up historical weather data, which was fed into our risk
assessments. During the tow out, there were 106 people onboard operating the live platform, and their safety was our prime focus.

In addition to the two 170t-tow tugs, the offshore fleet for the operation also included a stand-by vessel with fast rescue craft, two positioning tugs, an air
diving boat, plus another large anchor-handling work vessel, the Pacific Wyvern, brought into the Caspian from Asian waters the vessels entire
superstructure had to be removed to pass beneath the bridges on the canal system.

Once the platform was moored at the mating site in 70m of water, the foundation cans were brought from the parking site some 30km away, ready for
mating to the base of the legs. For this operation, Technip had developed an ingenious solution known as the assisted pendulum method, which was to
make its world debut at Shah Deniz.

The concept of the assisted pendulum existed in Technip, but was not fully developed, explains TPG veteran Naudin. We considered other solutions
but given the poor soil conditions at the installation site, and the absence of heavy lift vessels, the pendulum approach was selected to be the best
method. But it required a lot of detailed technical development to give us the confidence to apply it in the field.

In essence, the pendulum method involved ballasting a floating can in such a way that it inclined steeply in the water before sinking. By tethering the can
to a boat and also to the base of the jackup leg, the cans descent into the water could be controlled to produce a pendulum motion, with the can coming
to rest directly below the leg.

The method works because once the can is submerged, its apparent weight in water reduces from 1500t to around 50t, adds Naudin. This means that
its momentum is reduced so that it will not snap the control lines, and this also lets us use lighter lines to make the operation manageable. But with the
pendulum in this case being so large, it was critical to know the precise weight of each can and where its centre of gravity lay.&rsquo
Before leaving Zykh, each can was jacked up and weighed, twice, with around 120t of concrete grout being added to the structure to adjust its centre of
gravity. Despite the size and complexity of the cans, the location of each centre of gravity was known to within an accuracy of 150mm.

The final, detailed version of the pendulum method was the culmination of many workshops and peer reviews, challenging us to allow for every
contingency, recounts Makin. We built three separate mathematical models to predict the behaviour of the can, but trying to simulate the procedure with
a physical scale model in a tank test was not feasible as it is too complex to scale down accurately. In effect, this meant that once the can was
submerged and descending, we had to rely on our calculations.

The offshore operation was controlled from a temporary control room onboard the jackup. The platform was held at one of its corners by a boat tied to a
seabed mooring, with another vessel on the other free corner to maintain a fixed heading. The first can was attached to the Pacific Wyvern with an 80m-
long tow line. With the can brought next to the jackup hull against specially designed fenders, three lightweight suspension ropes were attached to the
upper part of the can from the bottom of the jackup leg at the third corner of the hull these ropes were carefully measured to ensure they would share
the load of the can equally. The Pacific Wyvern then pulled the can away from the hull, exerting a steady 10t thrust to hold all the lines in tension to avoid
possible shock loading.

A signal, sent from the boat through an umbilical connection to the can, opened flooding valves on the can to begin slowly ballasting selected
compartments in a predetermined sequence air left the tanks via vent lines at the top. The can began to submerge and incline to an angle of 30
degrees to the vertical.

Ballast compartments in each can were carefully flooded to control its submergence and angle before
its controlled descent

As the can began to sink, the boat was pulled back towards the platform, but held the tow line in tension, says Makin. The sinking can began to level
up as it swung down with all tanks and vents open, taking only 10 seconds to reach 50m below the bottom of the leg.

In fact, for submergence of the first two cans, a small air pocket trapped in one of the last ballast compartments to be flooded kept the can at the
surface, though steeply inclined. And here BPs insistence that all operations must be reversible came into play to good effect. Air was pumped through a
hose from the Pacific Wyvern to bring each can back to an even keel on the surface over about three hours, after which a modified flooding sequence
was employed to ballast and lower the can a Plan B developed by Technips naval architects. The can then submerged fully and the pendulum effect
worked perfectly. The third can went in without any hitches on the first attempt.

With a can suspended under a leg, the leg was jacked down to connect with the can and pick it up, another installation first. This required very tight
construction tolerances of less than 20mm in the fabrication of the cans and the legs the sides of the triangular cross section legs are each 17m long.

This level of accuracy was to ensure the correct operation of the locking mechanism which attaches a leg to a can, says Smith. These are Britannia
Spring-loks, with male and female halves, three on each can and leg base. As the leg was lowered onto the can, the two halves of the connectors
engaged together, self activating to form a robust and rigid connection similar in concept to a garden hose connector, but in this case at a scale of 1m
in diameter. The halves on the legs had sat underwater for about a year at the quayside, and were never joined to the can halves until the installation
operation. All of them engaged first time. In this part of the operation, we had only one shot to get it right.

The mating operation was monitored by underwater cameras in all there were 49 cameras among the 25 additional systems onboard the jackup for the
transport and installation operation, including acoustic positioning devices, weight sensors and marine communications across the fleet of support
vessels. Each can was also fitted with a black box which when analysed after the installation operation showed that all tasks had been achieved well
within the safety factors employed by the design engineers.

With the can securely attached, the leg was jacked up to a point where the can was around 5m below the hull, a shallow depth which allowed divers to
disconnect the tow line, umbilical and suspension lines from the can, without the need for air saturation equipment. The divers then connected the hoses
and piping between can and leg which would come into action during the final installation stage. All three cans were in place and fully hooked up in a
period of eight days from the start of the mating operation.

I think we can say we have now proven the assisted pendulum method works well three times in fact, concludes Naudin.

Penetrating finale
With all cans attached, the legs were jacked up fully and the platform towed to the installation site, some 15km away. Here, the platform would be set
into its final position over the drilling template on the seabed the challenge was not only to control the penetration of the legs into the soft seabed, but
also to achieve a very accurate position of the platform in relation to the template.

The template measures only 21m by 6m, notes Makin. In order not to create difficulties for the drilling operations which follow platform installation, the
accuracy of platform placement had to be within 0.5m and less than one degree in terms of heading.

An array of 10 acoustic transponders had been placed on the seabed and template, which would communicate with receivers on the hull of the platform
to determine relative positions, with GPS navigation as a support system. The platform was tied to four anchored vessels which controlled the position of
the platform by paying out or taking in lines from their winches.

The legs were lowered towards the seabed, with the hull always in the water penetration of the cans was carried out one at a time.

The rate of penetration was controlled by a combination of the speed of the jacking systems on the leg, plus control of the pressure inside the 8m-deep
skirt of the can as it went down into the seabed, adds Naudin. This was done by controlling the egress of water from the underside of the can via valves
and pumps controlled from the platform topsides control room. The penetration speed varied from 50mm to 200mm per minute, allowing us to avoid
punch through as the cans went through the soft clay layer at around 4m.

The three cans each needed different degrees of assistance to reach final depth, reflecting the variability of the seabed soils. One can penetrated to the
final depth of almost 8m under gravity alone, another required some pumping assistance to create a suction effect inside the skirt, and the third was
achieved primarily by pumping. Once all three legs were securely founded, the platforms hull was jacked up to be 5.5m clear of the water and locked
into position. The penetration operation took two days. Following this, some 600t of concrete grout was pumped into the 200mm-deep void spaces left
between can and seabed inside the skirts to produce a firm foundation for the platform, requiring some six days to complete. The platform well within
the required positional accuracy was then jacked up to its operational height of 13.5m above the sea surface and locked into place.
The Shah Deniz TPG 500 platform installed and jacked up to operational position

It took only 18 days from the TPG 500 sailing from Zykh to the time the bridge was lowered to connect the platform to the flotel, brought alongside to
support the hookup, commissioning and drilling operations, project director McHugh points out. Despite the challenges and unique nature of the
transport and installation of the Shah Deniz platform, the operation was a major success, executed without accident or incident. The key contributor to
this was meticulous planning of every task, every detail, repeatedly checking everything again and again. The devil is in the detail and no stone was left
unturned in preparation. It proves that if a rigorous approach is adopted and followed, we should not be inhibited in doing things for the first time.

And thus the Caspian cradle has carried its cans, the pendulum has swung, and Shah Deniz has become a new source of energy for the region.

Frontiers copyright and legal notice

Copyright in all published material including photographs, drawings and images in this magazine remains vested in BP plc and third party contributors to
this magazine as appropriate. Accordingly neither the whole nor any part of this magazine can be reproduced in any form without express prior
permission, either of the entity within BP plc in which copyright resides or the third party contributor as appropriate. Articles, opinions and letters from
solicited or unsolicited third party sources appearing in this magazine do not necessarily represent the views of BP plc. Further, while BP plc has taken
all reasonable steps to ensure that everything published is accurate it does not accept any responsibility for any errors or resulting loss or damage
whatsoever or howsoever caused and readers have the responsibility to thoroughly check these aspects for themselves. Any enquiries about
reproduction of content from this magazine should be directed to the Managing Editor (email: terry.knott@uk.bp.com).

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