Subsea field development is constantly moving to increasingly deep waters. The target is currently about 3000 m (e.g. for the Pre-Salt field development, offshore Brazil and Angola in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean). Further there are new initiatives in place in even deeper offshore districts. This fact leads to new technical challenges regarding the full spectrum of installation equipment and components.
In the last decade great effort was dedicated to tensioning systems upgrading; satisfactory results were achieved by specialized factories, especially on high capacity wire and fibre ropes. This paper first reviews the main technical characteristics of high strength steel wire ropes and compares their performance with the synthetic fibre ones. The comparison covers both mechanical properties (e.g. breaking load, stiffness, linear weight, …) and production capability (e.g. maximum rope length, maximum rope diameter, …). The achievements on different offshore operations carried out by Saipem vessels, particularly addressed to pipe laying and field development in deep waters, are discussed. The analysis is focused on application scenario, particularly outlining the experienced performance as load members in handling/lifting systems.
