The challenging conditions faced in today’s oil and gas market has increased the focus on cost effective, sustainable operations. Operators are faced with the decision of extending or ending offshore production asset life and pre-decommissioning planning has emerged as a key challenge for the industry. Mitigating uncertainty, enabling decision making and justification as to whether to end or extend asset life, as well as detailed knowledge of asset conditions is crucial. In this blog, we will discuss how a range of Diagnostics services can be used to provide this detailed knowledge throughout late life operations.

Tracerco Diagnostics™ FMI (Flooded Member Inspection) technology has become the industries number one choice for inspecting platform members for water ingress. Over recent years we have seen reduced time for inspection campaigns in order to meet the new financial demands expected from the Oil and Gas Industry. At Tracerco we continue to put an emphasis on successful initial inspections, ensuring that there are no unnecessary delays. This ensures that inspections are right first time and reduces the risk of far greater financial impact which can be associated with repeat inspections, or remedial work that may not even be required.

The FMI system can measure the degree of water ingress into platform structural members indicative of through wall defects without any need to remove marine growth or specialist coatings. It is operable as a simple attachment to any Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) or can be manually deployed by a suitably trained diver. A highly focused beam of gamma radiation and an ultra-sensitive detector unit are mounted on opposite forks of a variable yoke system and positioned across the diameter of the member under inspection. The transmitted radiation intensity is measured and compared to the intensity expected for a dry member based upon the particular member’s diameter, wall thickness and system calibration. Water inside the member will result in a decrease in the expected “dry member” transmitted signal. Each response is evaluated by our bespoke software and trained Offshore Technicians to provide a full report of platform jacket integrity.