Marine Pipeline Engineering 2001 – Introduction

DESIGN OVERVIEW:
INTRODUCTION TO OFFSHORE PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION

Any engineering task has to be tackled systematically. The first task is to assemble
information about what the design requirements are. It is prudent to devote time to
writing a clear and complete design brief, which includes all the operational requirements
and leaves nothing to be assumed. Experience shows that if this is not done conflicting
assumptions are made, and serious problems often follow.

As a minimum, the design brief should set out:

! the chemical composition of the fluid the pipeline is to transport (and whether it
will change during the design life); the maximum and minimum pressure at the
upstream end;
! the maximum and minimum pressure at the downstream end;
! the maximum and minimum temperature at the upstream end;
! the maximum and minimum temperature at the downstream end;
! the locations and heights of the end points; the available sources of bathymetric
and topographic information;
! the available sources of geotechnical information about the seabed under the
pipeline;
! the available sources of oceanographic information about the sea around the
pipeline;
! any known constraints (politics, environment, other uses of the seabed such as
fishing, cables, navigation) on the choice of route.

Once the brief has been agreed and documented, the design can begin. The optimal
sequence is:

1. to select the route (because that determines the length and the maximum depth);
2. to select the type and material of the pipe(single pipe or bundle, rigid or flexible,
carbon steel, corrosion-resistant alloy or composite);
3. to carry out a hydraulic and thermal analysis to determine the pipeline diameter,
the temperature and pressure profile, and whether or not thermal insulation,
heat tracing or cooling are required);
4. to select materials for the external anti-corrosion coating, internal coating,
concrete weight coating, and thermal insulation (if required);
5. to choose the wall thickness;
6. to carry out a stability design, to make the pipe heavy enough to be stable on the
seabed, and to determine if the pipeline will have to be trenched;
7. to design the cathodic protection system;
8. to confirm that the pipeline is constructible.

Design is rarely a straight-through sequence followed only once, and usually it requires a
series of design loops because of complex interactions between different factors.

For instance, the temperature profile of flow in a pipeline is determined as part of step 3
in the sequence. Wall thickness design follows in step 5, and the designer then assesses
the design for upheaval buckling (a form of buckling that occurs when a hot pipeline

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under pressure arches upward from high points on an uneven seabed profile). Upheaval
buckling depends on the operating conditions, the pipeline weight and diameter, and the
level of seabed roughness, which in turn interacts with the choice of route in step 1. If the
designer decides to suppress upheaval buckling by continuous rock dumping, which is a
straightforward but expensive option, the presence of the rock itself alters the heat
transfer between the pipeline and the sea, and therefore alters the temperature profile
derived in step 3. The designer might instead decide to trench the pipeline and to backfill
over it with the trench spoil. Often this is a cheaper option, but the seabed has to be
trenchable at reasonable cost (step 8), and trenching has a beneficial effect on stability
(step 6).

This is the well-known design spiral. The process needs to be managed carefully if the
design is to converge inwards towards an optimal solution, rather than to diverge
outwards into a chaos of unresolved and conflicting requirements. The sequence cannot
usually be purely automatic, and experience is needed to direct it.

In many civil engineering structures, design optimisation has much more to do with
simplifying construction than with saving small quantities of steel and concrete.
Optimisation of pipeline design is highly worthwhile, however, because the lengths are so
great. A saving of only 1 mm in wall thickness adds up to a substantial cost saving over
even a few km.

Design naturally involves a series of calculations. Most of them are not complicated, and
nowadays they can rapidly and economically be carried out on a PC. This allows the
designer to concentrate his mind on the non-quantitative aspects of the design process,
and to explore alternative designs in the search for an optimum.

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 Marine Pipeline Engineering 2001 – Route selection

ROUTE SELECTION

1 Introduction

An early task for the designer is to select the route of the pipeline. Route selection is a
critical activity. A poorly-chosen route can be much more expensive than a well-chosen
route. It can lead to costly surprises and delays at later stages, particularly if unexpected
geotechnical or marine conditions are encountered, or if the route leads to conflicts with
public authorities, with environmental interests, or with other operators. It is not an
exaggeration to say that a few days (and a few thousands of pounds) spent on sensitive
and thoughtful evaluation of the pipeline route can save months and millions later.
Several notorious examples illustrate the problems that can arise.

In some instances, the choice of route is straightforward. This is so in many areas of the
North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, where 30 years experience has lead to a good
understanding of the seabed geotechnics and the oceanographic conditions, where the
seabed is geotechnically uniform, smooth and free of obstructions, and where there are no
conflicts with other fields, with existing or planned subsea installations and pipelines. In
many other parts of the world the choice of route is much more difficult. In areas such as
the Arabian Gulf, north-west Australia, Indonesia and the approaches to the Norwegian
coast the seabed has a heavily uneven topography and is hard to trench.

Even in developed areas, a surprising number of factors have to be taken into account,
among them:

politics
environment
approaches to existing platforms and risers
avoidance of zones exposed to anchor damage
avoidance of zones exposed to dropped-object damage
crossings of existing pipelines
cables
areas of very hard seabed
areas of very soft seabed
boulder fields
pockmarks
iceberg ploughmarks
submarine exercise areas
fishing
minefields
dumping grounds
dredging
wrecks

A rational choice of route cannot be made without information about the seabed
topography and geotechnics. It is never sensible to embark on a marine survey without
carrying out a desk study first. Much information can be gathered from charts, geological
maps, fishing charts, aerial photography, satellite photography and synthetic-aperture

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radar, other operators, navigation authorities and navies, and local inquiry, and
sometimes from more obscure sources. In one instance, a book by a nineteenth-century
bird-watcher gave invaluable information about a proposed pipeline route in northern
Russia.

Landfalls are particularly complicated. Many of the famous disasters of pipeline

construction have been in very shallow water in shore approaches. A bad choice of
landfall location can be very expensive indeed, and can lead to devastating cost overruns
and interminable disputes. The designer needs to have a perceptive understanding of the
geomorphologic factors that decide the form of the coast, and of the way in which the
construction of a pipeline will interact with environmental factors such as wave
refraction, longshore sediment transport, wave breaking and seabed geology.

Section 2 discusses physical factors such as seabed geotechnics. Section 3 discusses route
selection implications prompted by interaction with other users of the seabed. Section 4 is
concerned with political and environmental factors. Section 5 describes two case studies.

2 Physical factors

A pipeline rests on or in the seabed. From the pipeline point of view, the ideal seabed is
level and smooth, so that no spans are formed, and composed of a medium stable marine
clay, which the pipe settles into and gains enhanced stability. If the seabed is uneven and
rocky, there will be many spans, some of them long enough to need correction, and at
high points the concentrated forces between the bed and the pipe at may damage the
external coating. Hard seabed is difficult and expensive to trench. If the seabed is very
soft, on the other hand, a pipeline will sink into it, and may be difficult to reach for
inspection and for operations such as tie-ins to other pipelines or possible repairs.

Some seabeds are highly mobile, and include sand waves (which may be 15 m high and
100 m long) and smaller ripple features, on many scales from meters to centimeters in
height. These features move significantly during the life of a pipeline, so that a pipeline
supported on the crest of a sandwave when it was constructed may later be left
unsupported when the wave has moved on. The movements are irregular and difficult to
predict confidently. For these reasons, it is better to avoid sandwave fields whenever
possible. The route of the first Forties pipeline in the North Sea, for instance, was shifted
southwards to avoid a sandwave field. Sometimes it is impossible to avoid sandwaves and
megaripples, and then a trench is dredged to a level at or below the troughs of the
sandwaves, before the pipe is laid along the trench. This is called "presweeping". It has
been used for several pipelines in the southern North Sea, where a combination of
shallow water, high tidal currents, high waves induced by north-easterly gales, and
mobile loose sand creates a complicated and changing seabed topography. The wider
issues of seabed mobility and its implications for pipeline stability are considered in the
notes on pipeline stability.

The complexity of marine geotechnics is at last being recognized. The variety of

geomorphology and topography on the seabed is as great as it is on land. There are many
features that influence the choice of pipeline route.

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Submarine landslides occur when high sedimentation rates overload and oversteepen
slopes. This happens particularly in deltas, such as the Mississippi and Fraser deltas in
North America, but there have also been large submarine slides in the North Sea . An
earthquake may trigger a slide in a marginally stable slope. A slide across a pipeline can
lead to very large movements of the line, and can easily induce tensile forces large
enough to break it. A slide along a pipeline is less serious, because the forces it induces
are smaller.

Parts of the seabed of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea are covered with boulders
and cobbles, some of them lying on the surface and some partially or wholly buried in
clay. The boulders are erratics that fell out of melting icebergs. They are may be more
than 1 m in diameter, and are a significant obstacle to most kinds of trenching machines.
'Pockmark' depressions in the seabed are formed when shallow gas escapes to the surface,
reducing the pore pressure and allowing loose sediments to collapse.

In tropical seas, coral forms large humps on the seabed, or coral pinnacles which can be
15 m high. Coral is fracture-resistant and extremely difficult to trench, and it is of course
undesirable to damage coral because of its ecological significance. The beds of tropical
seas are often carbonate sands (rather that the silica sands met temperate climates), and
if the sand is not disturbed by storms chemical processes harden it into a tough and
trenching-resistant rock.

In Arctic seas, many other features are met with. In the Arctic spring, the rivers thaw
while the sea is still frozen, and river water floods out across the sea ice. If the sea ice
includes a hole or a crack, fresh water flows downward through the hole, and forms a
whirlpool vortex and a rotating jet below the whole. The jet can excavate deep holes in
the bottom, called 'strudel scours' (after the German for 'whirl'). Large ice masses drift
into shallow water, ground, and are driven forward by wind and by the pressure of ice
sheets and ice packs. The ice gouges into the seabed, and makes grooves which can be 10
m deep and 100 m wide. Design and route selection to minimize the risk of gouge damage
is the major challenge of Arctic marine pipeline design. Relic gouges left by drifting
icebergs in the last glaciation are found in the northern North Sea.

Turning now to the water above the seabed, hydrodynamic factors too can influence the
choice of pipeline route. It is desirable to avoid high currents, which can sweep a pipeline
sideways and complicate pipelaying. High tidal currents occur in shallow seas in
macrotidal areas, in estuaries, and in straits between islands. It will often be better not to
cross the narrowest part of a strait, and instead to take a longer route which has lower
currents.

It is also desirable to avoid areas where waves are particularly high, because of the
adverse effect on stability of wave-induced water movements, and because high waves
slow or stop pipelaying. Wave-induced velocities are negligibly small at depths greater
than half a wavelength, but much increase as the water depth decreases[]. The effect is
still more severe if the waves break. For this reason, it is good to avoid long sections in
shallow water, and better to choose a route in deeper water (even if it is longer).

A wave moving in from deep water offshore slows down and steepens as it comes into
shallower water. If the propagation direction of the wave is not at right angles to the
depth contours, the propagation direction changes, so it becomes closer to the direction at
right angles to the contours. The wave crests turn so that they become more nearly
parallel to the depth contours, an effect that can be seen on most beaches. It is often wise

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to include a refraction analysis in the design process. If the coast includes headlands, and
the depth contours are convex away from the shore, this refraction tends to focus wave
energy on the headlands and away from the bays in between. The waves are higher off
the headlands, and this is a good reason for a pipeline route to avoid them. Another
reason is that the headlands often indicate the presence of harder rock, so that the softer
rock has been preferentially eroded to form the bays, and the harder rock will be more
difficult to dredge or excavate.

The water column may include sharp discontinuities of density, where that lighter less
saline water is on top of denser more saline water. These conditions occur in the Strait of
Gibraltar, south-east Asia and elsewhere. Internal waves can occur on the interface, and
can induce high velocities at the bottom.

3 Interactions with other users of the seabed

A remarkably large number of other human activities engage with the seabed, and the
choice of route must taken account of potential interference with them.

Oil and gas exploration and production are the most obvious. It is prudent to keep
pipelines away from platforms, naturally unless they have to be connected to them,
because of the possibility of damage by dropped objects, an increased risk of anchor
damage from supply vessels and construction vessels, and the remote possibility that fire,
explosion or structural failure on the platform might involve the pipeline. For the same
reasons, it is good to keep away from existing wellheads and manifolds, and wise to find
out where future subsea activities might occur.

Existing pipelines are the most common problem. It is possible for pipelines to cross each
other, but it is not practicable simply to lay the second pipeline across the first. A crossing
has to be carefully designed, so that neither pipeline damages the other, so that there is
no undesirable interference between the two cathodic protection systems. And so that
neither is overstress. One simple option is to trench the first pipeline more deeply at the
crossing point, to lay mattresses over the first line to provide physical separation and to
prevent coating damage, and then carefully to lay the second line over the crossing point.
Sometimes much more elaborate designs are required, particularly if the first line cannot
be lowered, so that the second line has to cross it by a bridge-like structure made of
mattresses, concrete units or rock dump. It follows that the number of crossings should be
kept to a minimum. At the very least, a decision to cross another operator's pipeline
necessarily implies time-consuming discussions about the design of the construction and
the measures that need to be taken during construction.

Vulnerable submarine cables criss-cross many areas of the sea floor. The usual way of
crossing a cable with a pipeline is to sever the cable first, to lay the pipeline through the
gap, and then to splice the cable and lower it back over the pipeline. This is an expensive
operation to be avoided if possible.

Fishing for demersal fish that live on or in the bottom is an important activity in many
shallow seas such as the North Sea. The heightened level of exploitation of fishery
resources leads fishermen into new geographical areas and deeper water, and often leads
to the use of larger and heavier bottom gear. Though fish are attracted to pipelines, a
politically influential fishing industry perceives the invasion of fishing grounds by

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pipelines as another threat to its livelihood, and may wish to see a pipeline route changed
to skirt the best fishing grounds.

Military activities use the seabed in various ways. Mines are laid in wars, and are not
recovered or deactivated afterwards. The explosives and detonators remain sensitive, and
the mines may drift about and lodge against pipelines. This is a major problem in the
North Sea and the Arabian Gulf. Submarines exercise, and may navigate close to the
bottom in order to hide from sonar. Some areas are used for artillery and bombing
practice. Various kinds of magnetic, acoustic and electrical sensors are laid on the seabed,
and are linked by cables. Munitions left over after wars are dumped at sea, and are
sometimes picked up by fishing trawls and dropped overboard.

Ships anchor in the approaches to ports, sometimes in carefully designated anchorage

areas but sometimes indiscriminately. Port approaches are dredged to increase depths in
shipping channels, and new ports and larger ships may lead to much extended dredging
during the design life of a pipeline. Occasionally ships sink: ships have sunk onto marine
pipelines and damaged them in at least two instances, one in Singapore and the other in
the Netherlands sector of the North Sea. The beds of many seas are littered with
shipwrecks, sometimes not properly recorded and only to be found by survey.

The seabed is also a potential source of minerals. The most important seabed mining
activity is dredging for sand and gravel, which is becoming more significant as land sites
become harder to find, because of intensive land use and environmental restrictions.

Finally, the seabed was in the past used as a dumping ground, for all kinds of materials,
from sewage sludge through chemical and nuclear waste to obsolete equipment. Only
recently has it been recognized how short-sighted and undesirable indiscriminate
dumping is, though it may be an environmentally sound solution in a few cases. Material
dumped in the past remains in place, and there may be damaging consequences if it is
disturbed.

4 Environmental and political factors

The importance and sensitivity of the environment cannot be overstated, particularly

after the controversies surrounding the Alaska pipeline, the abandonment of the Brent
Spar, the pipeline to Point of Air in North Wales, pipelines from the Norwegian sector to
North Germany, the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and marine pipelines constructed
and proposed for the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. A false step which appears to ignore
environmental factors can be fatal to a project. Even if it is not fatal, it can tie the project
down in years of public hearings and mountains of experts' reports, inevitably conflicting
with each other.

Each case is different, and there can be no simple answer. In as far as there is a solution
strategy, it is to be aware of the possibility of environmental impact from the very
beginning, and to consult widely with interested organizations and individuals.

In deep water, environmental concerns have generally been absent. This may be in the
process of change, particularly in parts of the world where the environmental movement
is strong and active. Concern has been expressed about construction noise disturbance to
marine mammals, and damage to benthic life on the seabed (though that damage is

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minimal by comparison with trawling damage). In tropical seas, there is a risk of damage
to coral.

In shallow water, and still more at landfalls, there are almost invariably concerns about
environmental factors. Shallow water is biologically productive, and its complex food web
engages bacteria, plankton, plants, invertebrates, fish, birds and marine mammals, so
that damage to one component may have far-reaching consequences. The response is to
study and quantify the effects, and to look for route alternatives and mitigation measures
that eliminate or minimize them. Much can be done by scheduling the construction period
at an appropriate season.

Environmental and political issues often become mixed, but there are political issues that
have nothing to do with the environment. It is usually a good idea to minimize the
number of different regulatory and political organizations that have to be dealt with, and
to avoid unnecessary incursions across national or state boundaries, or into offshore
leases that will necessitate negotiations with other operators. A glance at a pipeline map
of the North Sea reveals instances where routes have been selected so as to skirt national
boundaries.

5 Case studies

Two case studies show the interaction between different factors.

British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority wished to build a pipeline from the Fraser
Delta area south of Vancouver to a landing on Vancouver Island. Figure 1 shows some of
the factors that determined the route. The project is described in greater detail by Park [].

The political boundary between Canada and the USA lies just south of the delta, and
extends westward to a point in the middle of the Strait of Georgia. An early decision was
not to cross that boundary, because to do so would bring part of the pipeline under the
jurisdiction of US federal authorities, as well and numerous state and local organizations.

The land portion of the delta consists of low-lying islands. The delta is fronted by a tidal
flat, Roberts Bank, which is mostly dry at low tide and covered by about 1 m of water at
high tide. Landward sections of the bank are covered by grasses and seaweeds which are
fish spawning areas, and it was greed to schedule construction on the bank to avoid the
spawning season. The foreslope on the seaward side of the bank is relatively steep.
British Columbia has fewer earthquakes than California to the south or Alaska to the
north, but there are occasional large earthquakes. Oscillatory shear stresses induced by
an earthquake might liquefy the loose and geologically recent sand and silt sediments of
the bank, and the foreslope would then become unstable. The risk of liquefaction is least
where the gradient of the foreslope is smallest, about mid-way between the South Arm to
the north and Canoe Passage to the south, and so it was decided to locate the pipeline at
that point. The pipeline runs straight down the slope (down the 'fall line'), so that if a
flowside should occur the sand would flow along the pipeline rather than across it.

On the west side of the deep water, a submerged ridge of sandstone, Galiano Ridge, lies
parallel to the chain of islands. The ridge is bounded by near-vertical cliffs up to 20 m
high. On either side, the seabed is silt, too soft to support construction equipment or rock
embankments. At first it was thought that there were no gaps in the ridge, and various

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construction alternatives were studied, but later it was found that opposite Valdez Island
a gently-sloping curved valley led up onto the ridge, and that there was enough space to
construct two pipelines in the valley. The route then continued onto Valdez Island and
across a shallow channel to Vancouver Island.

The second example is the gas pipeline from Algeria to Spain. The shortest marine
crossing is the Strait of Gibraltar, but that means traversing Morocco, and for a long time
political differences between Algeria and Morocco made that route unthinkable. Direct
crossings from Algeria to Spain were considered, but if Moroccan waters are to be avoided
the greatest water depth is at least 2500 m, and at the time that was thought technically
impracticable for a large-diameter pipeline. (That position has now changed).

In the late 1980s, reconciliation made a route through Morocco practicable. The next
question is where to cross the Strait. A crossing at the easterly end of the Strait
encounters very deep water, more than 900 m, and has also to avoid Gibraltar (disputed
between Britain and Spain). Further west, the water is much shallower, because of a
submarine mountain range, called by oceanographers the Camarinal Sill, which runs
north-south in an irregular curve. Depths on the top of the range are much less, between
300 and 400 m. However, a route along the range encounters two difficulties. The first is
that the range has a rough and broken topography (as one might expect from a similar
range of land), so that a pipeline that followed the crest of the range would have many
long spans. The second is related to the complex flow of water through the Strait. Dense
saline Mediterranean water flows from east to west through the bottom of the Strait. Less
saline and less dense Atlantic water flows from west to east through the top of the Strait.
The level of the interface changes with the tides in the Atlantic, and is influenced by
large-scale oceanographic changes. Internal waves form on the interface.

The consequence is that currents are strong and highly variable, changing markedly
within a few minutes. These effects are at their most severe on the crest of the Camarinal
Sill, and are less strong in the deeper water on either side. That is another reason to
avoid the crest of the range. The route finally chosen skirted the ridge to the west.