FROM THE
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
OIL & GAS AND SPECIAL MARKET TOPICS AT SUBOPTIC
BY DENISE TOOMBS INTRODUCTION
The Oil & Gas/Special Markets Topic Area of the SubOptic 2019 Programme offers a chance to review ideas and issues from markets that are transitioning from fellow seabed users to partners in offshore operations. The energy sector, including oil and gas (O&G), offshore wind, and transmission, will be highlighted in this Topic Area, as well as special markets, such as scientific systems, and cable scrapping and repurposing. The objective of the panel presentations will be to showcase these markets, and the common issues, challenges and solutions they share with submarine telecommunications. As a preview of Special Markets topics, this article highlights some common challenges and approaches our teams have observed working with project developers, operations and compliance managers in offshore energy and subsea cable systems. The focus here is on the front end of the capital project life cycle, as shown in Figure 1, with the goal of sparking some ideas for SubOptic 2019 papers and discussions.
CONCEPT AND FEASIBILITY
Investment in front-end planning has gained importance and is consid-
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
ered established practice, especially where environmental approvals and stakeholder concerns have increased the lead times for developments and introduced scheduling risks. Environmental and stakeholder issues are frequently incorporated earlier into engineering design phases. Programs and strategies implement-
ed at the early stages of projects to reduce overall project risk include: • Feasibility studies. Desktop studies are often expanded to include field visits, stakeholder meetings, and more detailed data gathering to inform better risk assessment and business decisions very early in project/system development. Feasibility