Offshore Platform
By Oil and Gas | Category: Oil and Gas Industry, Oil and Gas Production
An offshore platform, often referred to as an oil platform or 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 them to shore. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be attached to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or be floating.
Offshore Platform
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.
Larger lake- and sea-based offshore platforms and drilling rigs are some of the largest moveable man-made structures in the world. There are several distinct types[3] of platforms and rigs: Fixed Platform, Compliant Tower, Semi-submersible Platform, Jack-up Platforms, Drillships, Floating production systems, Tension-leg platform, Spar Platforms.
A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water desalinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a Floating Storage Unit and/or tanker loading facility. Elements in the oil/gas production process include wellhead, production manifold, production separator, glycol process to dry gas, gas compressors, water injection pumps, oil/gas export metering and main oil line pumps. All production facilities are designed to have minimal environmental impact.
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