1. TOPS Offshore
Production Systems
(TOPS)
4th April 2011
Thursday, 28 July 11

2. Contact
• Inventor: Pat Haynes
• Organisations: A.P.Haynes Consulting/
Eboroil Ltd
• Norwegian Org nr 986455744
• Address: Jon Smørsv 4A, 1397 Nesøya
• Tel: +47 66847068 Mob Tel: +47 45275598
• Skype name : eboroil
• E-mail eboroil@me.com
Thursday, 28 July 11

3. The TOPS Concept
• The average water depth in the world is
3795m and this is a solution for the future
• all offshore oil and gas will based on having
a continuous process including exploration,
production, and refining and for certain
fields, transport ship (TOPS)
• most of the patents have lapsed
Thursday, 28 July 11

4. TOPS Eliminates
• delay in appraisal and development
• conventional rigs and platforms
• refineries
• over balanced drilling as per the BP GOM
blow-out
• significantly lowers blow out and pollution risk
in arctic areas and in deep water
Thursday, 28 July 11

5. Schedule
• Site survey and studies -
15 months
• Construct Mooring
tower - six months
• Install riser tower - 1
day weather window
• Pre-Install production
template - 60 days
• Drill - 15 plus days
• Start Production
5
Thursday, 28 July 11

6. Preliminaries
• establish bottom conditions, sea water
properties as well as wave and current
profile at the site (GEMS)
• establish if affecting marine mammals,
seabed corals and migratory bird paths
(NPL)
• shoot 3D seismic of the area
• establish that when the reservoir is de-
pressurised that there is no earthquake risk
(Geomec)
Thursday, 28 July 11

7. Components
• Mooring tower in steel in shallower waters
and Titanium in deep water (Mercon)
• Well template with co-mingled production,
water and gas injection services and heavy
oil splitting services together with subsea
processing (FMC/others ?)
• Aframax sized TOPS with dp 2 providing
direct well access for drilling and
intervening throughout the field life
Thursday, 28 July 11

8. Exploration Phase
• Design site specific TOPS mooring tower in
steel/Ti with 2000 ton barytes ballasted
base and hydrogen generators to suit
location (Mercon with SBM as
subcontractor)
• Install ocean energy generators, template
and flowlines (Technip/others?)
• Mobilise the TOPS ship and drill first well
• In event of dry well redeploy equipment
Thursday, 28 July 11

9. Financing
• in 1980 TOPS was based on paying the
shipowner 20% rate of return on the equity
in the original acquisition cost of the
reuseable components of the project
• The oilco requires to pay for the lower
buoy, the installation work and 90 days of
operations
• The leasing partners in TOPS are sought
Thursday, 28 July 11

10. TOPS Mooring Tower
• 2000 tons of barytes ballast in the base
• Upper buoy contains ballast tanks to allow
for installation and removal - reuseable
• Lower buoy at minus 160 ft have hose take
offs to the TOPS ship - site specific
( Contitech)
• Ocean power to generate H2
(Magnomatics/ITM Power)
Thursday, 28 July 11

11. TOPS Template (FMC)
• 4 by 8 on 8’6” centres well slots
• each Christmas tree to incorporate shear
and blind rams and to be connected to a
co-mingling distribution manifold on the
central two rows for production at the
flowing wellhead pressure of the best well
and subsea separation.
• use duplex acoustic controls with hydraulic
accumulators on the template
Thursday, 28 July 11

12. Subcontractors to FMC
• Advance Energy Systems to crack heavy oil
to C13 and gases as appropriate
• Nemo Engineering - pipeline sledges
• Acoustic controls - used Cameron
successfully before and Kongsberg
• Water injection pumps, artificial lift, gas
injection and compression - Clavis are
developing a unique pump technology
Thursday, 28 July 11

13. TOPS
• station keeping by Dp2 with constant
tension mooring winch working at between
70 and 90 tons (Huismann/AXTech)
• Converted Aframax or OBO which can
have LNG tanks put in the holds for later
life operations (previous model in Eboroil jv
m.v.Arctic which was 25,000 dwt)
• Receive oil, gas, water and distribute oil,
gas, drill cuttings removal and pigging
services
Thursday, 28 July 11

14. Drilling
• 30” conductors installed on all wells in the
construction phase (Technip)
• use Casing Drilling technology to drill
underbalanced in a closed loop to contain
kicks (Schlumberger)
• use composite cable based push/pull
wireline (supplier yet to be chosen) to
retrieve bits etc
Thursday, 28 July 11

15. Drilling Operations
• Mount Helirig on the Port side of the ship
to work in the lee based on heading bow
quarter into the weather
• Have top drive and coil for intervention
• Recover and treat drill cuttings with
biodegradable oil solvent and dump cuttings
• have slip joint design by Aker accepted by
Schlumberger
Thursday, 28 July 11

16. Thoughts
• Stern into weather towards SALM
• Accommodation at stern
• Shottels bow and stern instead of Becker/
other rudders such as Schilling from main
engines
• New build
•
Thursday, 28 July 11

17. Process plant
• Have main processing subsea for separation
of oil, gas and water
• Mount equipment 3 m above cargo holds
• Have surface oil treatment as heating to 80
deg C to remove metals with activated
charcoal and then crack at 400 deg C to
diesel product specifications with a catalyst
• Have chemical injection and pigging services
Thursday, 28 July 11

18. Maximise Oil Recovery
• Continuous monitoring of reservoir behaviour and
optimisation of offtake using multiple realisation of
static and dynamic reservoir models.
• Continuously drill and intervene guided by 4D
seismic
• To inject gas super critically until reservoir until
dry
• Inject cation rich sea water to recover oil prior to
low surface tension water to break up macro oil in
water emulsions
Thursday, 28 July 11

19. Ship Operations
• Have Captain in charge of all operations
• Change crew every three weeks and
recharge activated charcoal using the dry
evacuation system (GEC)
• Have unidirectional currents and wave
energy generate hydrogen for dp system
(Magnomatics/Pulse Tidal/Green Fuel/ITM
Power)
• Be a zero emission ship
• Have shuttle tankers use a Remora unit
Thursday, 28 July 11

20. Ocean Energy
• Install wave energy
generators to
provide power in
storms
• Install
unidirectional
current generators
for mid-water
installations for
constant power
load
• install in 90deg arc
Thursday, 28 July 11

21. Contingencies
• Have two dp UT 705 offshore platform support
vessels with active stability tanks and acoustic
responders to shut down the template in case
of problems
• Have oil skimming with a biodegradable oil
dispersant, bulk barytes, cement, fi-fi services,
anti collision radar, dry evacuation transfer
services
• in the arctic amphibious life-boats and infra red
satellite based radar to navigate in minimum ice
Thursday, 28 July 11

22. The First Project
• The Irish Authorities have been approached
to develop Barryroe in conjunction with
the current Option holders
• All contracts will be at cost plus 20% and
there will be no bidding with technical
excellence deciding the contract award
• Intend to work with Lloyds Registry and
have IOM flag
Thursday, 28 July 11