Emerging Frontiers: Focus on the Subsea

President's column

Over the past 6 months, I’ve talked about several emerging geographic and technology frontiers in the oil and gas industry. One of the most exciting and prolific emerging technology frontiers is also geographic in a way—the seafloor of deepwater basins around the world. Since the first installation of a subsea production tree in the Gulf of Mexico in 1961, the surge in the deployment of subsea wells has resulted in significant economic and environmental improvements in deepwater development.

High oil prices, technological developments, and the need to counterbalance declining production in mature shallow-water basins have been driving the move of offshore oil and gas operations into deep and ultradeep (>10,000 ft) waters. Growth in this sector has been momentous over the past few decades. Subsea installations will grow from roughly 2,000 in 2001 to an estimated 8,500 by 2018. Growth in capital expenditure (Capex), driven primarily by Asia, Africa, and the North Sea is estimated to grow by 120% between now and 2018.

Increasingly, operators are cost-effectively targeting reservoirs over a much wider area, tying back subsea wells both to fixed platforms in shallow waters and to floating infrastructure in deeper waters. In fact, capital-intensive ultradeepwater developments are expected to capture 48% of Capex and 23% of tree installations in 2014–2017, in contrast to 37% of Capex and 15% of installations in 2008–2013.