BP Clair Ridge case study

Synectics has designed and delivered an end-to-end surveillance solution for Clair Ridge – the £4.5bn second-phase development project taking place in the North Sea’s Clair field.

Located 75km west of the UK’s Shetland Islands, Clair Ridge is the most recent high-profile project to feature in Synectics’ North Sea portfolio, including developments such as Jasmine/Judy, Golden Eagle, Shell Gannet, Shell Clipper, Erskine, and Elgin.

The Clair Ridge development, due for full platform topside installation in 2015, will consist of two bridge-linked platforms – a drilling and production platform and a second for quarters and utilities.

Production is scheduled to commence in 2015 and continue for 40 years. It is estimated that the development will produce around 120,000 barrels of oil per day and will provide a vital hub for future expansion in the area. It will be the first time that BP’s award-winning new LoSal EOR extraction technique for boosting oil yield – achieved by using desalination technology – will be used. This is expected to result in more than 40 million additional barrels being cost-effectively recovered over the lifetime of the field.

Working in partnership with IT and telecommunications company Page Europa, Synectics’ IP-based system – using Synergy integrated security management software – will provide complete surveillance across both platforms for safety and security processes.

"As the main telecommunications and security systems integrator on this significant North Sea project, implementing a robust and intuitive end-to-end surveillance solution that would be flexible enough to provide reliable safety and security situational awareness was paramount. Synectics’ solution fulfilled the brief perfectly."
Toni Partipilo, Sales Director, Page Europa

COEX C3000 PTZ hazardous area and safe area dome camera stations will be positioned throughout the development, all of which will be centrally controllable, allowing live colour footage to be viewed, played back and analysed without any disruption to recording. H.264 encoding technology will also enable high-quality footage to be transmitted and stored with minimal bandwidth requirements.

Amedeo Simonetto from Synectics said: “As well as providing detailed coverage for both hazardous and non-hazardous platform areas, the system we’ve supplied is centrally controllable and will integrate effectively with multiple third-party systems including the Driller’s CCTV system.

“We also factored in remote-viewing capabilities to enable head-office monitoring of the platform as well as future capacity. With plans to use Clair Ridge as a hub for further expansion and development of the field, the system we’ve developed is future-proof as it is flexible enough to cope with additional demands.”

About Clair Ridge
The Clair field was discovered in 1977, but challenging reservoir characteristics and the technological limits of the time meant it was 2001 before BP and partners approved a development plan for a first phase of development.

To the north of Phase One is Clair Ridge, where BP is targeting 640 million barrels of recoverable resources. The multi-billion-pound investment involves two new bridge-linked platforms, the construction of which was completed in 2016.