Feasibility of Field Investigations to Evaluate Ice Action on the Drake Subsea Pipeline Barrette, Paul D
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NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRC Feasibility of field investigations to evaluate ice action on the Drake subsea pipeline Barrette, Paul D. For the publisher’s version, please access the DOI link below./ Pour consulter la version de l’éditeur, utilisez le lien DOI ci-dessous. Publisher’s version / Version de l'éditeur: https://doi.org/10.4224/40000401 Technical Report (National Research Council of Canada. Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering), 2017-01-13 NRC Publications Archive Record / Notice des Archives des publications du CNRC : https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/object/?id=c911ab71-6baa-45c1-912d-e11820d53aa8 https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/voir/objet/?id=c911ab71-6baa-45c1-912d-e11820d53aa8 Access and use of this website and the material on it are subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth at https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/copyright READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEBSITE. L’accès à ce site Web et l’utilisation de son contenu sont assujettis aux conditions présentées dans le site https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/droits LISEZ CES CONDITIONS ATTENTIVEMENT AVANT D’UTILISER CE SITE WEB. Questions? Contact the NRC Publications Archive team at [email protected]. If you wish to email the authors directly, please see the first page of the publication for their contact information. Vous avez des questions? Nous pouvons vous aider. Pour communiquer directement avec un auteur, consultez la première page de la revue dans laquelle son article a été publié afin de trouver ses coordonnées. Si vous n’arrivez pas à les repérer, communiquez avec nous à [email protected]. Technical Report OCRE-TR-2015-029 Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering Feasibility of field investigations to evaluate ice action on the Drake subsea pipeline Technical Report OCRE-TR-2015-029 Paul D. Barrette 1200 Montreal Rd, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6 January 13, 2017 National Research Council Conseil national de recherches Canada Canada Ocean, Coastal and River Génie océanique, côtier et fluvial Engineering Feasibility of field investigations to evaluate ice action on the Drake subsea pipeline Technical Report OCRE-TR-2015-029 Paul D. Barrette January 13, 2017 National Research Council Conseil national de recherches Canada Canada Ocean, Coastal and River Génie océanique, côtier et fluvial Engineering Feasibility of field investigations to evaluate ice action on the Drake subsea pipeline Technical Report OCRE-TR-2015-029 Paul D. Barrette January 13, 2017 [Frontispiece: Trenching and burial are seen as the best way to protect a subsea pipeline from being damaged by drifting ice keels. The question is: what is a safe burial depth?] OCRE-TR-2015-029 Executive Summary Subsea pipelines (also known as ‘offshore’, ‘marine’ or ‘submarine’ pipelines) in freezing waters are exposed to a number of environmental threats that do not exist in warmer waters. Of particular concern is the damage they can sustain from ice features such as pressure ridges that drift into shallow areas, typically as they approach the shoreline. Doing so, the ice keel comes in contact with the seabed and, as the ice keeps drifting, it may gouge the seabed for considerable distances. Trenching and burial is seen by the offshore engineering community as the best means of protecting these structures. The challenge is to determine what a safe and cost effective depth should be along the planned pipeline route. A very large amount of resources has been expended in generating our current knowledge-base on ice gouging. The bulk of this work was aimed at obtaining direct and indirect evidence on gouge depth and sub-gouge deformation. Ice- seabed gouging scenarios were mostly investigated with physical simulations in a laboratory and computer-based numerical modeling. The reason for this is that full scale events are very difficult to observe, yet the offshore engineering community agrees there is a need for more information about the real scenarios. The Drake pipeline is located offshore Melville Island, in the Canadian High Arctic. It was built on-site in 1977-78 and connected to a production well, which operated for only a few months. That structure was meant to be a testbed to guide similar developments in the Arctic in deeper waters. The well was plugged in 1995 and the pipeline was abandoned on the seabed. This structure was designed to resist ice action, and represents a unique opportunity to verify the assumptions made by the engineers almost 40 years ago. The pipeline extends from the shoreline to the wellhead located about one kilometer offshore to a water depth of 55 meters. It is buried at the shoreline crossing over a distance of about 300 meters (20 meter water depth), to a target depth of 1.5 meters below sea bottom. At the water line, a berm made from ice and gravel was built to further protect it from encroaching ice. The National Research Council obtained permission from Suncor, the main property owner, to look into the feasibility of field work to assess the line’s physical state. The results of this study are meant to determine the feasibility of launching a field program to inspect the state of the pipeline. An overview of the ice regime at that location over the last few years shows a propensity for this area to be covered with landfast multiyear ice from November to July. Its thickness has not been determined but observations made in the north of Martin Byam’s Channel point to an average of 5 meters, with extremes up to about 20 meters. From July to October, the area is still covered with ice but there is evidence that every now and then, the cover breaks up sporadically as the ice moves eastward due to wind action, leaving an open water expanse. These events are thought to be fortuitous and hard to predict. The field work proposed would generate visual information on the physical state of the pipeline, of the trench backfill and of the ice berm. It would also yield information on ice gouging activity on the seabed and on its physical and mechanical properties. The ice itself will not be investigated. Aircraft support and ship support to access the area need to be carefully assessed. In the first case, the work would be done from the ice surface. i OCRE-TR-2015-029 Either way, it would involve a remotely-operated underwater vehicle (ROV) equipped with visual, scanning and 3D imaging instruments. Seabed sampling and a survey of the pipeline will also be conducted. Regulatory approval, communication with the local communities and a health and safety plan will be initiated if/once funding for this initiative is confirmed. The equipment and methodology required to collect the data needs to be assessed further. Once decisions have been made about equipment and methodology, the level of participant involvement and costs will be determined. Project completion is planned for December 2021. ii OCRE-TR-2015-029 Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................. i Table of Contents ............................................................................................... iii Table of Figures .................................................................................................. v Table of Tables ................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 2. Objectives and rationale ............................................................................. 3 3. Engineering perspective ............................................................................. 4 3.1 Subsea pipelines in cold waters – Environmental risks ....................................... 4 3.2 Known cases of damage to pipelines by drifting ice ........................................... 4 3.2.1 Slave Lake, NWT, Canada ............................................................................... 4 3.2.2 Lake Erie, Canada ............................................................................................ 5 3.2.3 Labrador, Canada ............................................................................................. 5 3.3 Seabed gouging by ice keels – Description and options for pipeline protection . 5 3.4 Pipeline burial depth ............................................................................................ 5 3.5 Understanding seabed gouging phenomena ......................................................... 7 3.5.1 Real-scale events .............................................................................................. 7 3.5.2 Ice seabed gouging simulations ....................................................................... 8 3.6 The need for real-scale information ..................................................................... 8 3.7 Current procedure to determine pipeline burial depth ......................................... 9 3.8 Knowledge gaps in the state of practice .............................................................. 9 3.9 Relevance of the Drake pipeline ........................................................................ 10 4. The Drake pipeline ..................................................................................... 12 4.1 Arctic drilling ....................................................................................................