4Subsea to monitor steel catenary risers offshore Brazil

4Subsea has secured a service agreement to monitor steel catenary risers (SCRs) on the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel on the Bacalhau field offshore Brazil.

The service is delivered using 4insight Subsea Asset Integrity which combines advanced strain and motion sensors to measure vessel motions and riser load with algorithms to calculate riser pressure and hoop stress to monitor the integrity and risks to steel catenary risers on the FPSO, 4Subsea said.

According to the company, the digital service is delivered as monitoring dashboards and data fed into Equinor’s data platform for further analysis.

The results are presented as easy-to-interpret insights and dashboards, simplifying the analysis and supporting critical decisions. The data is also available through open APIs, which the operator’s own data platforms can access for further analysis.

Peter Jenkins, CEO of 4Subsea, said: “We are pleased to be chosen to monitor the integrity of the risers at Bacalhau. These services have proven to reduce operational risk and costs during complex operations and are great demonstrations of the digital transformation of offshore operations to increase safety.”

The Bacalhau FPSO is the first phase of the Bacalhau field in Brazil’s pre-salt Santos Basin, acquired by Equinor. It will operate on blocks BM-S-8 and North Carcara.

The development will consist of 19 subsea wells tied back to the FPSO. The FPSO is 364 meters long, 64 meters wide, and 33 meters deep, with a designed draft of 22.65 meters.

Equinor is the operator of the Bacalhau field with a 40% stake, while ExxonMobil and Petrogal hold 40% and 20%, respectively. Pré-sal Petróleo, a non-investor Government agency, is also a partner.

The Norwegian company took its Final Investment Decision (FID) for the Bacalhau field on 1 June. The investment is worth around $8 billion.