Development of Deepwater Riser Monitoring Systems

In recent years, the exploration activity of oil and gas industry in ultra deepwater is numerous. The main offshore industries around the world are busy building drilling systems for deeper and deeper water, progressively using all kinds of new technologies. At the same time, the technology of deepwater risers, which are the main tools connecting sea surface and seabed, are more and more important in the offshore industry. While, recent incidents with drilling risers in the Gulf of Mexico have led the industry´s application of more stringent integrity assurance requirements to its deepwater risers. Riser monitoring provides information that enables the operator to measure riser configurations and fatigue damage, confirm the integrity of the riser, assist with operational decisions, optimize inspection, maintenance and repair schedules/procedures and calibrate design tools. Monitoring can also improve the understanding of complex behavior of risers for the improvement to future design and analysis tools. This paper presents the characters and applications of some standard monitoring systems that suit specific objectives and requirements. An example project of acoustic approach is introduced with its working mode, design scheme and data processing method in the end.