Performance of Steel Jacket Platforms in Recent Gulf of Mexico Hurricanes

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank J. Puskar ◽  
Sean M. Verret ◽  
Aditya Hariharan
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
American Petroleum Institute ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Management Service ◽  
Hurricane Andrew ◽  
Design Procedures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Steel Jacket ◽  
Water Damage

In the past few years there have been several large hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that have destroyed or damaged over 200 fixed offshore platforms. These include hurricanes lvan (2004), Katrina (2005) and Rita (2005). Prior to these, the most recent hurricane to cause this level of damage was hurricane Andrew in 1992. Below water damage consisted of separated underwater braces, buckled braces, broken legs, and cracked connections. Above water damage consisted of wind and wave damage to decks and topsides equipment. Interestingly there has been little if any pile damage in any of these hurricanes. Although some newer platforms suffered damage and even destruction, most of the destroyed and damaged platforms were of older vintage and designed to American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice 2A-WSD (RP2A) practices that have since been improved. This paper summarizes the types of damage and destruction that has been found, including likely causes. It describes how some of this damage correlates to API design procedures. The work is based upon a series of projects funded by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to study the effects of hurricanes on these types of offshore facilities.

scholarly journals BARGE BUFFALO 292: OBSERVATIONS OF SATELLITE-TRACKED SURFACE DRIFTERS

1997 ◽  
Vol 1997 (1) ◽  
pp. 916-919
Author(s):  
Debra A. Simecek-Beatty ◽  
William J. Lehr ◽  
Walter R. Johnson ◽  
James M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
Management Service ◽  
Wind Drift ◽  
Vector Correlation ◽  
Joint Program ◽  
Surface Drifters ◽  
Visual Observations

ABSTRACT As part of a joint program to use satellite-tracked drifters at accidental oil spills, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed three drifters supplied by the Minerals Management Service during the barge Buffalo 292 spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The deployments complemented visual observations of the oil spill and provided data for calibrating the on-scene spill model. The data-rich environment of this particular spill response made it possible to calculate the vector correlation between the drifters and a hindcast of the oil movement and to estimate the wind-drift factors for the oil-tracking drifters.

scholarly journals Safety and Performance of Offshore Platforms Subjected to Repeated Earthquakes

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foteini Konstandakopoulou ◽  
Maria Konstantinidou ◽  
Nikos Pnevmatikos ◽  
George D. Hatzigeorgiou
Keyword(s):  
Ground Motions ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Rehabilitation Process ◽  
Seismic Sequences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Accumulation Of Damage ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Offshore Oil

In this work, a systematic study is conducted on the behavior of three-dimensional offshore oil/natural gas platforms under the action of seismic sequences. Such repeated earthquakes result in a noteworthy accumulation of damage in a platform since, in many cases, any rehabilitation process between any two or more successive ground motions cannot be essentially materialized because of lack of time. Conversely, in the past, the seismic response of offshore platforms has been exclusively investigated for the case of single earthquakes. In this study, two three-dimensional platforms are examined, where the first one is assumed to be completely constrained at its base (fixed boundary conditions), while the second one is founded in deformable soil with the aid of long piles. These structures are subjected to real seismic sequences which have been recorded by the same station in a short period of time. Additionally, the platforms under consideration are also subjected to artificial seismic sequences. In this study, we found that sequential earthquakes have a significant effect on the response of these special structures, and this finding should be taken into account in their design.

scholarly journals Airborne Assessment of Methane Emissions from Offshore Platforms in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (8) ◽  
pp. 5112-5120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Gorchov Negron ◽  
Eric A. Kort ◽  
Stephen A. Conley ◽  
Mackenzie L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Methane Emissions ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
The U.S

Total and Methyl Hg in Sediment Adjacent to Offshore Platforms of the Gulf of Mexico

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. DeLaune ◽  
I. Devai ◽  
Aixin Hou ◽  
A. Jugsujinda
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Methyl Hg

An assessment of uncertainties in fatigue analyses of steel jacket offshore platforms

1982 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kawamoto ◽  
S. Shyam Sunder ◽  
Jerome J. Connor
Keyword(s):  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Steel Jacket

Influence of the Ballast Tanks Loading on the Allowable VCG in Damage Case

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Rueda ◽  
Bruno Madella ◽  
Kazuo Nishimoto ◽  
Fabio Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Loading Condition ◽  
Center Of Gravity ◽  
Offshore Platforms ◽  
Single Variable ◽  
Ridge Area ◽  
Ballast Tanks ◽  
Study Case ◽  
The Stability

The aim of this paper is the study of the Allowable VCG in monocolumn offshore platforms. As study case the MonoBR — an innovative conceptual unit developed by a partnership of PETROBRAS/CENPES and University of Sa˜o Paulo — was analyzed. The studies were carried out during the design of MonoBR for the Walker Ridge area, Gulf of Mexico. The effect on the stability of the unit caused by a damaged tank depends on its loading condition, since there is lost of both, buoyancy and mass, modifying unit’s displacement and center of gravity. In other words, depending of the tank loading, the amount of water that enters or leaves the unit in a damage case may vary widely. In this paper is presented the methodology adopted in the study of influence of the ballast tanks loading in the Allowable VCG curve in MonoBR, introducing this other variable beyond the draft, the usual single variable in AVCG curves. At the end are presented the main results for the study case, whose AVCG can vary by 50% for the same draft depending of the tank loading.

Potential invasion of the Gulf of Mexico by Protemblemaria punctata (Teleostei: Chaenopsidae), a cryptobenthic fish endemic to Venezuela

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Argüelles-Jiménez ◽  
Merari Contreras-Juarez ◽  
Eduardo Palacio Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Invasive Species ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Small Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oil Platforms ◽  
Offshore Oil Platforms ◽  
Viable Population ◽  
Body Sizes ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Offshore Oil

The movement of species to areas outside their native ranges has greatly intensified over the past few decades. However, detecting invasive species often requires detailed and regular surveys, especially for animals with small body sizes. A cryptobenthic fish endemic to the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, Protemblemaria punctata (Cervigón, 1966), is reported here from the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, based on the collection of 8 specimens (5 males and 3 females) from Bajo Mersey, a coral reef in the Parque Nacional Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano (PNSAV). The collected specimens were taken from sessile worm tubes that grew on PVC structures previously placed on the reef at a depth of 6 m. The number of P. punctata specimens we collected could indicate that the species has established a viable population on the reefs in the PNSAV. The colonization of P. punctata in the Gulf of Mexico waters may be due to the dispersal of individuals present on offshore oil platforms that are transported from Trinidad to Venezuela and the Gulf of Mexico.

STATISTICAL ESTIMATES OF SHORELINE OIL CONTACT IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 547-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter R. Johnson ◽  
Zhen-Gang Ji ◽  
Charles F. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Wind Speed ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Wind Field ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Ocean Current ◽  
Management Service ◽  
Outer Continental Shelf ◽  
Statistical Estimates ◽  
Level Of Concern

ABSTRACT As steward of the Federal offshore lands known as the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), Minerals Management Service (MMS), is responsible for balancing the Nation's search for commercial oil and gas with protection of the human and marine environments. The MMS regulates the development of mineral resources in an environmentally safe manner by analyzing environmental consequences of the OCS program prior to lease sales or approval of industry's plans. The Oil-Spill Risk Analysis (OSRA) model was developed by the DOI for the analysis of possible oil-spill impact from offshore oil and gas operations. The OSRA model produces statistical estimates of hypothetical oil-spill occurrence and contact from projected OCS operations. The model generates an ensemble of sea surface oil-spill trajectories by initiating thousands of oil-spill simulations at hypothetical spill locations to statistically characterize oil-spill risk in areas of prospective drilling and production and along projected pipeline routes. The hypothetical spills are initiated every day and move at the velocity of the vector sum of the surface ocean currents plus an empirical wind-induced drift of speed equal to 3.5% of the local wind speed, with a wind-speed-dependent direction (Samuels et al., 1982). The model generates oil-spill trajectories by integrating interpolated values of the wind and ocean current fields at intervals short enough to use the full spatial resolution of the ocean current and wind fields. The OSRA model, as applied to the Gulf of Mexico, uses 3-hourly ocean current fields over 7 years (1993–1999) generated by the Princeton Regional Ocean Forecast System (PROFS) (Oey et al., 2004). The PROFS is driven by synoptic winds, heat flux, and river flows. The wind field is based on the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts surface winds enhanced by observations from meteorological buoys and Coastal-Marine Automated Network stations. The same wind field used to force the ocean model is used to move the oil in the spill trajectories. As an example of environmental assessment, the OSRA model was used to estimate the spreading of oil spills by simultaneously modeling fractions of each spill, referred to as spillets. The spillets were used to calculate additional statistics, in particular, the length of coastline contacted by a large spill. The coastline was divided into equal length segments. Assumptions were made regarding what fraction of the spill (i.e., the number of spillets) that contacted a land segment would constitute a contact larger than the “level of concern.” Sensitivity of the analysis to key assumed parameters, such as the number of spillets and the level of concern, were tested.

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