The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to structure and prioritize the criteria (issues) that most strongly affect pipeline routing decisions for offshore projects. An AHP model is created incorporating these criteria and the pair-wise comparisons technique is used to establish weighting of the criteria. The collaborative pair-wise comparison approach allows all team members to explore and sound out each other's perspectives on the importance of each of the routing assessment criterion in a disciplined way that builds consensus around the model adopted for the cases under investigation.
This AHP model is then tagged to the geomatics database automatically linking expertise in the pipelining disciplines with advanced geomatics capabilities for assessing export pipeline routing schemes to directly account for key considerations like flow assurance, spanning, and seabed hazard avoidance.
The model is then applied to challenging pipeline planning cases for offshore Western Australia. The results track the rankings of each routing option under each of the identified and prioritized route selection criteria as the actual site data is applied along the entire length of the pipeline. Sensitivities to variations in the weightings of the evaluation criteria are investigated in a way that confirms the robustness of the routing recommendations.
The paper clarifies how the issues and key technical information are efficiently captured and applied within full field development planning studies that reflect real-world information (geomatics). The ability to easily accommodate changes in the engineering/technical basis and/or corporate priorities is highlighted, as well as the consensus-building strengths of this advanced decision-support methodology.
