offshore engineering and some history of oil wells.

written by: amir aziz

      Offshore Engineering applies ocean engineering studies to the engineering of devices within the benthic environment, such as Marine Foundations, Mooring Systems, Ocean Mining, Offshore Disposal, Offshore Pipelines and Cables, Offshore Structures, Submersible Vehicles, Submarine Habitats and Salvage Operations.

        According to the Wikipedia, there were also the installation of structures and pipelines in a marine environment for the production and transmission of oil and gas that known as offshore construction. According to the source, Construction in the offshore environment is a dangerous activity and where possible the construction is modular in nature with the individual modules being assembled onshore and using a crane vessel to lift the modules into place. Oil platforms are key fixed installations from which drilling and production activity is carried out. Drilling rigs are either floating vessels for deeper water or jack-up designs which are a barge with liftable legs. Both of these types of vessel are constructed in marine yards but are often involved during the construction phase to pre-drill some production wells. Specialist floating hotel vessels known as flotels are used to accommodate workers during the construction and hook-up phases. So, that is the reason why did a person have to be trained before becoming specialist in order to constructing the platform construction.

       Other key factors in offshore construction are the weather window which defines periods of relatively light weather during which continuous construction or other offshore activity can take place. Safety is another key construction parameter, the main hazard obviously being a fall into the sea from which speedy recovery in cold waters is essential.

       In constructing the pipeline for the transmission of the oil and gas, the main types of vessels used for pipe laying are the "Derrick Barge (DB)", the "Pipelay Barge (LB)" and the "Derrick/Lay Barge (DLB)" combination. Diving Bells in offshore construction are mainly used in water depths greater that 120ft, less than that, the divers use a metal basket driven from an "A" frame from the deck. The basket is lowered to the water level, then the divers enter the water from it to a maximum of 120ft. Bells can go to 1500ft, but are normally used at 400 to 800ft.

       In searching the information about oil platform, I found that offshore platform, often referred to as an oil platform or an oil rig, is a large structure used to house workers and machinery needed to drill wells in the ocean bed, extract oil and/or natural gas, process the produced fluids, and ship or pipe them to shore. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, may consist of an artificial island, or may float.

       Most offshore platforms are located on the continental shelf, though with advances in technology and increasing crude oil prices, drilling and production in deeper waters has become both feasible and economically viable. A typical platform may have around thirty wellheads located on the platform and directional drilling allows reservoirs to be accessed at both different depths and at remote positions up to 5 miles (8 kilometres) from the platform. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections; these subsea solutions may consist of single wells or of a manifold centre for multiple wells.

       In searching the information about the offshore engineering, I also found some information about the history of oil wells. Around 1891 the first submerged oil wells were drilled from platforms built on piles in the fresh waters of the Grand Lake St. Marys (a.k.a. Mercer County Reservoir) in Ohio. The wide but shallow man made reservoir was built from 1837 to 1845 to provide water to the Miami and Erie Canal.

• Around 1896 the first submerged oil wells in salt water were drilled in the portion of the Summerland field extending under the Santa Barbara Channel in California. The wells were drilled from piers extending from land out into the channel.
• Other notable early submerged drilling activities occurred on the Canadian side of Lake Erie in the 1900’s and Caddo Lake in Louisiana in the 1910’s. Shortly thereafter wells were drilled in tidal zones along the Texas and Louisiana gulf coast. The Goose Creek field near Baytown, Texas is one such example. In the 1920’s drilling activities occurred from concrete platforms in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo. 

• The oldest subsea well recorded in Infield’s offshore database is the Bibi Eibat well which came on stream in 1923 in Azerbaijan. The technique used here involved using landfill to raise shallow portions of the Caspian Sea.
• In the early 1930s the Texas Co., later Texaco (now Chevron) developed the first mobile steel barges for drilling in the brackish coastal areas of the gulf.
• In 1937 Pure Oil Co. (now Chevron) and its partner Superior Oil Co. (now ExxonMobil) used a fix platform to develop a field 1 mile offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana in 14ft of water.
• In 1946, Magnolia Petroleum (now ExxonMobil) drilled at a site 18 miles off the coast, erecting a platform in 18 ft of water off St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
• In early 1947 Superior Oil erected a drilling/production platform in 20 ft of water some 18 miles off Vermilion Parish, La. But it was Kerr-McGee Oil Industries (now Anadarko Petroleum), as operator for partners Phillips Petroleum (ConocoPhillips) and Stanolind Oil & Gas (BP) that completed its historic Ship Shoal Block 32 well in October 1947, months before Superior actually drilled a discovery from their Vermilion platform farther offshore. In any case, that made Kerr-McGee’s well the first oil discovery drilled out of sight of land.
• The Thames Sea Forts of World War II are considered the direct predecessors of modern offshore platforms. Having been pre-constructed in a very short time, they were then floated to their location and placed on the shallow bottom of the Thames estuary. In 1938, the Superior Oil company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. However, the first producing platform out of sight of land was installed by the Kerr-Mc Gee Company in 1947. This is the date generally accepted as the start of the offshore oil era.

       Offshore & Dredging Engineers make structures such as fixed and floating platforms for the oil and gas industry. They also design undersea pipelines and other underwater equipment for this sector. An important feature is the design of dredging equipment for land reclamation, maintenance and the recovery of embedded minerals in deep-sea locations. Another application of offshore engineering is the design of offshore wind farms. Offshore & Dredging Engineers are the people who design facilities for the 70% of the earth’s surface area that is not land.