Ready to respond in depth 

A tour of the base conjures up thoughts of moon landing vehicles and other futuristic devices. Although the structures here have many similarities with such units, their role is advanced operations in deep water.

“These can range from tie-ins to hot taps,” says Kjell Edvard Apeland, StatoilHydro’s project manager for developing hot tapping technology for the Ormen Lange southern field.

Expansion

The PRS serves as an emergency response facility which can quickly mobilise to repair breaks or other damage on submarine pipelines. But it is also heavily involved in projects for various types of tie-in to the existing network.

“Using an emergency response facility also to perform planned operations is unique, and the most important reason for the success we’ve had with the PRS,” explains Apeland.

The number of kilometres of pipeline covered by emergency response from the PRS has shown a marked expansion since the system was established in 1987 – from 948 to more than 12,000 kilometres.

Projects

Personnel at the PRS base can look back on a series of interesting projects, where the key element has been technology development on the fly.

Requirements have also changed. Divers may no longer use seabed habitats in more than 180 metres of water, and have been replaced by remotely operated equipment.

Apeland highlights the repair of the Kvitebjørn pipeline as an example of the way acute problems can be overcome with the PRS emergency response.
“To the best of our knowledge, that was the first remotely operated repair of a large gas pipeline,” he observes.

Other entries in the long list of PRS achievements include the world’s first remotely operated hot tap, which took place on Tampen Link in 2008.

In August, the world’s deepest hot tap operations on a pressurised pipeline was performed on the Ormen Lange field in the Norwegian Sea. The operations were done to tie in a new subsea template in the southern part of the Ormen Lange field to the existing infrastructure on the sea bed.

More than 80 tie-ins have been performed with hyperbaric welding over the years. Pipe up to 44 inches in diameter has been welded under water in this way on Langeled, and the equipment used is now upgraded for 48-inch lines.