The European offshore industry is encountering a significant change of thescenario. The necessity has come up to move from production of large fields inshallow water to many small and isolated fields in deeper water, thus requiringa higher degree of automation, higher availability, and lower cost (both subseaand on platforms). Therefore a control and power supply concept is described, which consequently introduces elements of modern automation technology tosubsea installations.
The situation in European oil and gas production is full of challenges bothin the engineering and commercial area.
We do have significant resources and production from our own (by far not bigenough to be autonomous, yet important at least from a political point ofview), but
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distributed over many different regions,
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not many big fields,
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mostly offshore,
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in many cases already beyond peak production rate.
The perspectives also are full of question marks, as
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no big fields are to be expected in the future,
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work has to concentrate on a wealth of small fields,
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the fields will be offshore,
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these small fields may be isolated (i.e. apart from existinginfrastructure),
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water depth will increase (up to 600 m),
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geographical latitude will increase (north of 62°)
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the environment will become more and more hostile and pollutionsensitive,
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the oil price is expected not to change significantly within the nextdecade.
