Subsea 7 was awarded a contract for the design, manufacture, testing, and operation of a new pipeline repair system by Total E&P Angola.
The pipeline repair system comprises a set of permanent equipment including the spool deployment frame, rigid spool piece, end connection skids and two mechanical pipeline connectors together with a suite of ROV deployed or operated tools for preparing and aligning the pipeline prior to the connector installation.
Subsea 7’s newly designed system was then used to repair a 12 inch diameter water injection pipeline in the Girassol field, located 210 km northwest of Luanda, Angola.
The project was an entirely diverless repair in water depth of up to 1,350 m and was completed in two phases. During the first phase, permanent works equipment was installed on the seabed of the damage location. In the second phase, the ends of the damaged pipeline were lifted, prepared, and aligned before the mechanical connectors were installed, set, and tested with annulus tests onto the previously installed spool piece.
Article continues below…Final confirmation of the repair was achieved by a pipeline leak test from the Girassol floating production storage and offloading vessel, completed in December 2009.
