Hutton Production Risers—A Novel Cleaning Problem (an up-to-the-moment case history)

Abstract

Conoco’s novel Tension Leg Platform in the northern North Sea has presented the industry with a novel cleaning problem. Production risers transport reservoir fluids from sea bed to surface on Hutton. The novel cleaning problem arises because these risers are protected from corrosion by a thin, and relatively fragile, coating of flame-sprayed aluminium (FSA). There is a requirement to keep these risers free of marine growth, and the challenge was offered to a wide spectrum of UK-based companies to come up with a viable, and necessarily innovative, system to remove this marine growth without damaging the FSA.