An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ancora, which itself comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα.
An oil platform is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms will also have facilities to accommodate the workers, although it is also common to have a separate accommodation platform linked by bridge to the production platform. Most commonly, oil platforms engage in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or float. In some arrangements the main facility may have storage facilities for the processed oil. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections. These sub-sea facilities may include one or more subsea wells or manifold centres for multiple wells.
A mooring is any permanent structure to which a seaborne vessel may be secured. Examples include quays, wharfs, jetties, piers, anchor buoys, and mooring buoys. A ship is secured to a mooring to forestall free movement of the ship on the water. An anchor mooring fixes a vessel's position relative to a point on the bottom of a waterway without connecting the vessel to shore. As a verb, mooring refers to the act of attaching a vessel to a mooring.
A floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil. An FPSO vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced by itself or from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline. FPSOs are preferred in frontier offshore regions as they are easy to install, and do not require a local pipeline infrastructure to export oil. FPSOs can be a conversion of an oil tanker or can be a vessel built specially for the application. A vessel used only to store oil is referred to as a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel.
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is a deepwater port in the Gulf of Mexico 29 kilometers off the coast of Louisiana near the town of Port Fourchon. LOOP provides tanker offloading and temporary storage services for crude oil transported on some of the largest tankers in the world. Most tankers offloading at LOOP are too large for U.S. inland ports. LOOP handles 13 percent of the nation's foreign oil, about 1.2 million barrels (190,000 m3) a day, and connects by pipeline to 50 percent of the U.S. refining capability.
A spar is a marine structure, used for floating oil/gas platforms. Named after navigation channel Spar buoys, spar platforms were developed as an extreme deepwater alternative to conventional platforms. The deep draft design of spars makes them less affected by wind, wave, and currents and allows for both dry tree and subsea production.
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets.
Offshore concrete structures, or concrete offshore structures, are structures built from reinforced concrete for use in the offshore marine environment. They serve the same purpose as their steel counterparts in oil and gas production and storage. The first concrete oil platform was installed in the North Sea in the Ekofisk oil field in 1973 by Phillips Petroleum, and they have become a significant part of the marine construction industry. Since then at least 47 major concrete offshore structures have been built.
A loading arm permits the transfer of liquid or liquefied gas from one tank to another through an articulated pipe system consisting of rigid piping and swivel joints to obtain flexibility.
Evopod is a unique tidal energy device being developed by a UK-based company Oceanflow Energy Ltd for generating electricity from tidal streams and ocean currents. It can operate in exposed deep water sites where severe wind and waves also make up the environment.
USNS Grasp (T-ARS-51) is a Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship, the second United States Navy ship of that name.
Al Başrah Oil Terminal, commonly referred to as ABOT, is a strategically critical Iraqi offshore, deep sea crude oil marine loading terminal that lies approximately 50 km (31 mi) southeast of the Al-Faw Peninsula in the Persian Gulf. Along with its sister terminal, the Khawr al ‘Amīyah Oil Terminal, the terminals provide the principal point of export for more than eighty percent of Iraq's gross domestic product as of 2009, and all of the oil from the southern Başrah refinery.
A steel catenary riser (SCR) is a common method of connecting a subsea pipeline to a deepwater floating or fixed oil production platform. SCRs are used to transfer fluids like oil, gas, injection water, etc. between the platforms and the pipelines.
Commercial offshore diving, sometimes shortened to just offshore diving, generally refers to the branch of commercial diving, with divers working in support of the exploration and production sector of the oil and gas industry in places such as the Gulf of Mexico in the United States, the North Sea in the United Kingdom and Norway, and along the coast of Brazil. The work in this area of the industry includes maintenance of oil platforms and the building of underwater structures. In this context "offshore" implies that the diving work is done outside of national boundaries. Technically it also refers to any diving done in the international offshore waters outside of the territorial waters of a state, where national legislation does not apply. Most commercial offshore diving is in the Exclusive Economic Zone of a state, and much of it is outside the territorial waters. Offshore diving beyond the EEZ does also occur, and is often for scientific purposes.
The Aasta Hansteen spar is a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit for natural gas operated by Equinor located 186 miles offshore in the Norwegian Sea. It is the first spar platform to be located on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). The Aasta Hansteen is named after Norwegian painter, writer and early feminist.
A submarine pipeline is a pipeline that is laid on the seabed or below it inside a trench. In some cases, the pipeline is mostly on-land but in places it crosses water expanses, such as small seas, straits and rivers. Submarine pipelines are used primarily to carry oil or gas, but transportation of water is also important. A distinction is sometimes made between a flowline and a pipeline. The former is an intrafield pipeline, in the sense that it is used to connect subsea wellheads, manifolds and the platform within a particular development field. The latter, sometimes referred to as an export pipeline, is used to bring the resource to shore. Sizeable pipeline construction projects need to take into account many factors, such as the offshore ecology, geohazards and environmental loading – they are often undertaken by multidisciplinary, international teams.
The Thistle SALM was a tanker loading facility that allowed oil from the Thistle oilfield to be transported to land where a submarine export pipeline did not yet exist. It was also the site of the 8 August 1979 Wildrake diving accident that killed two divers. and the 21 January 1981 Stena Seaspread diving accident (non-fatal).
Offshore embedded anchors are anchors intended for offshore use that derive their holding capacity from the frictional, or bearing, resistance of the surrounding soil, as opposed to gravity anchors, which derive their holding capacity largely from their weight. As offshore developments move into deeper waters, gravity-based structures become less economical due to the large size needed and the consequent cost of transportation.
The Safeguard class is a class of Towing, Salvage and Rescue Ship under the United States Navy.
