Water hammer likely cause of large oil spill in north sea
conference paper
On December 12, 2007, the second largest oil spill in the history of Norwegian oil exploration occurred on StatoilHydro's Statfjord Alpha platform. The spill was caused by a snapped 20″ oil off-loading hose. Thorough investigations by StatoilHydro [1] and by the Norwegian authorities [2] revealed the chain of events that led to this incident. One of the links in this chain was the unintended fast closure of the shuttle tanker's bow loading valve during off-loading. This closure initiated a pressure surge in the oil off-loading system. As part of the internal investigation by StatoilHydro, TNO carried out a water hammer analysis of the entire oil off-loading system, including the off-loading hoses to the seabed and further subsea piping up to the platform. These simulations revealed that high pressures could occur in the oil off-loading system due to fast closure of the bow loading valve followed by multiple reflections at diameter changes. The maximum pressures were more than 100 bar above the normal operating pressure of 10 bar. The diameter changes were introduced into the oil off-loading system to maximize the off-loading capacity. The results of the water hammer analysis provided the missing link between the fast closure of the valve and the damaged hose and also showed that this damage most likely occurred within 0.5 second after the closure of the valve. Based on the results of this analysis, also other oil off-loading systems are being reinvestigated to prevent a similar incident to occur in the future. Copyright © 2009 by ASME.
TNO Identifier
360812
ISBN
0277027X
9780791843673
9780791843673
Source title
2009 ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference, PVP 2009, 26 July 2009 through 30 July 2009, Prague, Czech Republic
Collation
9 p.
Pages
417-425
Files
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