Brazil is shaping up to be the proving ground for advanced applications of thermoplastic composite pipe, a lightweight, corrosion-resistant alternative to steel pipe and traditional flexibles.

Qualification programmes are under way in the country to demonstrate the technology’s suitability for deep-water riser applications, a goal long sought by the leading manufacturers of bonded thermoplastic composite pipe (TCP).

Netherlands-based Airborne Oil & Gas and Magma Global, of the UK, are each working with local and international service providers to prove the technology in deep-water applications — Airborne with Brazilian engineering company Simeros Technologies and Oslo-listed Subsea 7, while Magma has teamed with London-headquartered TechnipFMC and Brazil’s Ocyan on separate projects.

While TCP has been used widely in less-demanding oil and gas applications such as jumpers and intervention downlines, the move to an all-TCP deep-water riser would mark a significant technology leap — one Magma Global chief operating officer Charles Tavner compares to the impact on the aerospace industry of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the first commercial airliner to feature an airframe made mostly of composite materials.

Brazil’s pre-salt polygon is the logical place to take the leap, TCP advocates say, given the region’s demanding ocean conditions and highly corrosive reservoir fluids.

The pipe, which is constructed with carbon fibre and polymer to form a solid wall, also fits well with Brazilian state operator Petrobras’ preferred use of non-bonded flexible risers that can be reeled and installed with platform supply vessels.

The TCP manufacturers are taking different approaches in the qualification process. Airborne, which offers a range of pipes made with different fibres and polymers, is working with Simeros on a full TCP deep-water riser made with carbon fibre and polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF).

Magma, on the other hand, is exploring more intermediate steps, working with TechnipFMC on a flexible pipe that replaces several layers of the flexible with TCP and with Ocyan to use Magma’s M-Pipe — made with carbon fibre and PEEK (polyether ether ketone) — in a hybrid riser tower configuration.

Airborne’s Brazil programme involves a development “specific staircase” that starts with TCP flowlines and culminates with the deep-water riser, says chief technology officer Henk de Boer.

“With the flowline, we are now doing full-scale testing in Brazil and that part will be completed very early next year. All the tests we have done so far have been very successful,” De Boer says.

The full-TCP flowlines are made with glass fibre but more demanding conditions for the riser, including the capacity to handle temperatures up to 120 degrees Celsius, call for carbon fibre and PVDF systems, he says.

Airborne aims to finish qualification of the first deep-water riser by the end of 2021.

“The timing is also very much dominated by market adoption,” De Boer says. “You need to have a track record in jumpers and flowlines before you even consider using the technology for deep-water risers.”

The programme is drawing much industry interest nonetheless, says Renato Bastos, Airborne’s vice president Brazil.

“We are gaining momentum as we move forward. We see more and more interest from operators to jump in the qualification programme,” says Bastos, a flexible-pipe veteran who joined the company late last year.

The industry is interested in “the advantages that the TCP brings, not only in terms of reduction of weight but the fact that it’s corrosion-free in harsh environments and demanding fluids”, he says.

“Those alone are very important, and clients are looking more and more at this as a solution for the issues they face with the pre-salt fluids in Brazil.”

Magma’s Tavner agrees that operators see the full-TCP deep-water riser as “the end game” but says with the technology — and wide industry uptake — still years away, there is a place for the intermediate steps proposed by TechnipFMC and Ocyan.

Faced with corrosion and fatigue risks, Petrobras has shifted to traditional steel catenary risers, “and certainly, that’s something Shell and Total are moving towards”, Tavner says.

“But in our engagement with Petrobras, we’ve seen, once you replace the flexible with steel catenary risers, that you get quite quickly to a second-order problem, and that is, this is not where Petrobras wants to be.”

The company has long hewed to a flexible contracting model involving a separate installation vessel, contracted pipelaying support vessels and flexible pipe, he says: “But that’s difficult to do with traditional flexibles because of stress-corrosion cracking.

“What we have seen in the last two years or so is this very sharp focus on, right, can a carbon fibre thermoplastic pipe solve that problem?”

Ocyan and TechnipFMC are each offering “a really neat solution to the same problem”, Tavner says.

“Both of these guys are grappling with, how do I, with infrastructure currently sat in Brazil, take the benefits of thermoplastic composite pipe, but not take such a huge leap that I have to tear up my infrastructure?”

TechnipFMC’s proposed solution is a hybrid flexible in a free-hanging catenary configuration that integrates Magma’s carbon fibre PEEK pipe in a traditional non-bonded flexible, a design that is much lighter than the company’s existing riser systems and meets Brazil’s technical demands but can be handled and installed like traditional flexible pipe.

The Ocyan hybrid riser tower using M-Pipe is essentially a much lighter version of a proven technology that also eliminates the need for welding associated with steel pipe construction.

“You’ve got, basically, two intermediate solutions that solve what I describe as Petrobras’ second-order problem,” Tavner says. “They want to maintain a contracting strategy similar to what they are used to, and not move over to this massive EPCI where they kind of lose control and flexibility.”

Weekly

Brazil stakes claim as proving ground for TCP risers