HSE Consequences of FPSO Mooring Lines Pretension Uncertainty in Deep Waters Applications

Abstract The purpose of FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading) mooring system is to keep the unit operating in site in order to attend the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) requirements and to meet the production risers design requirements. The pretension specification is a design task and it is a key activity due to its influence on extreme loads and fatigue life for both the mooring lines and risers. It is surprising that the project pretension specifications are not always actually implemented in practice and followed during all the unit life. Some inaccurate methods are used to get the actual pretension and may cause significant errors, and this may cause pretensions values outside design allowable tolerances. A contemporary uncertainty analysis method that uses numerical simulations to estimate the consequences and propagation of the uncertainties in pretensions is applied. A case study is presented for the case of an operating FPSO moored by a spread system, offshore Brazil. A second investigation compares the uncertainty of pretensions measured by means of sensors with the uncertainties that arise from indirect measurements by top angles and as built data for mooring segments and anchor points. The paper finally shows the need of a Mooring Integrity Management (MIM) implementation of at least annual pretension measurements with a robust and higher precision system.