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Subsea
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Subsea
Subsea is a general term frequently used to refer to equipment, technology, and methods employed to explore, drill, and develop oil and gas fields that exist below the ocean floors. Deepwater is a term often used to refer to deeper subsea projects.
Oil and gas fields reside in deep water and shallow water around the world. When they are under water and tapped into for the hydrocarbon production, these are generically called subsea wells, fields, projects, development, or other similar terms.
The development of subsea oil and gas fields requires very specialized equipment. The equipment must be extraordinarily reliable in order to safe guard the environment, and make the exploitation of the subsea hydrocarbons economically feasible. The deployment of such equipment is very specialized and requires specialized and expensive vessels. The vessels need to be equipped with diving equipment for relatively shallow equipment work (i.e. a few hundred feet water depth maximum), and robotic equipment for deeper water depths. Any requirement to repair or intervene with installed subsea equipment is thus normally very expensive. This type of expense can result in economic failure of the subsea development.
Remotely operated vehicles (ROV's) are what most of the robotic pieces of equipment are called. ROV's are available in a wide variety of function capabilities and complexities from simple "eyeball" camera devices to multi-appendage machines that require multiple operators to operate or "fly" the equipment.
Subsea hydrocarbon (oil and gas) extraction has an exceptionally safe record and has been going on for approximately 100 years. The first subsea well was actually in a Lake - one of the Great Lakes in the USA and was in only a few feet of water.
A number of professional societies and organizations are involved with the subsea industry around the world. Government agencies administer regulations in their territorial waters around the world.
Such groups include Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), American Petroleum Institute (API), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), National Association of Corrosion Engineers (Nace).
Certifying authorities are also involved around the world and include Det Norske Veritas (DNV), American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Lloyd's.
Government agency in the USA that administers regulations (Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)) and provide management of the country's hydrocarbon resources is the Mineral Management Service (MMS).
