Halliburton Subsea has been investigating an innovative concept for subsea field development. The concept combines the company's riser and bundle competency, where the subsea production template and the transport system to the surface production unit is installed in one go by using the Controlled Depth Tow Method (CDTM). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate some of the technical challenges that have to be solved in order to materialise this concept. This concept mainly comprises of a system where the template, the bundle with all the flowlines, umbilicals, data-highways... etc and the riser is fabricated on shore as one integrated part. Then the complete system is towed to the field, installed on the seabed and then the riser bundle is tied-into the surface production unit. The system can be installed without use of advanced lifting vessels and comprehensive subsea tie-in operations. Hence, the installation time can be dramatically reduced. The system will facilitate completely insulated flowlines from the wellhead to the surface production unit. The flowlines may be heated by a hot water system.
The bundle riser concept is an innovative development to integrate, in one system, flowline and subsea facilities for installation in a single operation. The system consists of a bundle with a template in one end and a topside termination head in the other end. The bundle riser differs from other pipeline bundles, as its cross section is not equal through the whole length. The bundle riser, as proposed in this paper, has two sections. One section is the part of the bundle that will be lying steady on the seabed after installation. This has the same function as the pipeline bundles and consists of production, water injection, hydraulic and service lines within a carrier pipe.
