On offshore oil platforms, conductor support systems, also known as conductor supported systems or satellite platforms, are small unmanned installations consisting of little more than a

well bay A well bay is an area of an oil platform where the Christmas trees and wellheads are located. It normally consists of two levels, a lower where the wellheads are accessed and an upper where the Xmas Trees are accessed often along with the variou ...

, and a small process plant. They are designed to operate in conjunction with a static

production platform An oil platform (or oil rig, offshore platform, oil production platform, and similar terms) is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil plat ...

which is connected to the platform by flow lines and/or by

Umbilical cable An umbilical cable or umbilical is a cable and/or hose that supplies required consumables to an apparatus, like a rocket, or to a person, such as a diver or astronaut. It is named by analogy with an umbilical cord. An umbilical can, for example, ...

. Traditionally, these jacket-type structures have been installed and used in shallow to medium water depths of up to 40 – 60 meters. The conductor supported system use its inherited strength of the well conductors to support both the wells and the topside structure. The conductor supported system is particularly suited to areas with more benign environmental conditions, however it is a common development option even in hurricane / cyclone prone areas such as the Gulf of Mexico or Australia's Carnarvon Basin. The well conductors act as both structural, weight-supporting piles and flowlines for the produced fluids from the well. These are drilled and installed with a drilling jackup rig using conventional drilling / lifting techniques. A leading proponent of this cost effective style of offshore development was Apache Energy which commissioned numerous Conductor Supported Wellhead Platforms in the

Carnarvon Basin The Carnarvon Basin is a geological basin located in the north west of Western Australia which extends from the Dampier Archipelago to the Murchison bioregion, and is the main geological feature that makes up the North West Shelf The North ...

to feed its so called "String of Pearls" discoveries. Notably, in this Basin, the small field designs such as Conductor Supported Platforms and Monopods, often lay in proximity to the massive offshore

Liquefied Natural Gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the v ...

fields of the

North West Shelf The North West Shelf is a continental shelf region of Western Australia. It includes an extensive oil and gas region off the North West Australia coast in the Pilbara region. Geology Considerable parts of the region are the highest prospective ...

Gorgon A Gorgon ( /ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ ''Gorgṓn/Gorgṓ'') is a creature in Greek mythology. Gorgons occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary, the te ...

, Wheatstone and Pluto developments.

References

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