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APPENDIX E

WORKSHOP NOTES

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This appendix contains working notes generated in the workshop session. The consensus
views of the attendees are given in Italics.

E1 Current Failure Rates

E.1.1 Historical Data
The back ground historical mooring line failure rate for MODUs is one failure on
average every 2.5 rig years. The quoted estimate for FPSOs is one failure every 5-6
rig years, excluding turret problems. The MODUs data probably overestimates the
failure rates, whereas the FPSO figure is based on very limited data.

• Many of the failures on FPSO's occurred during the first few years of operation.
MODU failure rates have been slowly improving since 1985. There is a need to
differentiate between long term and short term datasets.

• The true number of failures may not be known, as reporting system is inadequate.
Under RIDDOR and DCR it is up to the duty holder to judge whether to report an
incident to HSE, hence some duty holders may decide not to report all incidents.

• There may be a need for a small database for reporting failures within the
UKOOA organisation.
E.1.2 Failures in this Sample
In the data gathered via the Questionnaires (UK Sector FPSOs & FSOs) two failures
have been identified, both of which were single line failures but of a type that could
have affect all the remaining lines (i.e. they were not random failures). There were 4
other mooring system failures noted, although they were all associated with the
failure of the turret location/control system on the same vessel, and the system is now
being upgraded to ensure its integrity.

From HSE statistics for 1980-1998, 6 FPSO mooring system failures have been
reported since the Seillean FPSO started oil production in 1988, which gives an
occurrence frequency of 5.4 operational years per unit for FPSOs, as the total number
of UK FPSO operating years to 1998 was 32.33.
As part of the workshop discussion, 6 units that had suffered incidents were
discussed:

• 3 of these had suffered failures directly associated with connectors and

terminations.

• In the first case, the pin connecting the cable socket to a connecting plate had
been held in place by means of an end plate. The end plate was connected to both
the pin by three bolts and to the socket by three bolts, thus preventing the pin
from moving. It is thought that the cyclic torque imparted on the pin by the cable
rotating in relation to the connecting plate caused the bolts holding the end plate
to the socket to fail, thus allowing the pin to fall out and so causing the line to

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fail. The main lesson learnt form this, is that pins in sockets should either be
allowed to fully rotate or be adequately restrained with cyclic torque loading
taken into account. Generally strict attention needs to be paid to locations in the
mooring system where there are large relative motions between components.
• Corrosion and fatigue of a wire rope as it entered the termination socket caused
the other two cases. It is possible cyclic bending of the wire rope immediately
adjacent to the socket and cyclic torque loading of the rope, which causes bird
caging, may have been contributory factors in these failures.

• One FPSO suffered failures due to insufficient sizing of mooring system and
changing out of cable in the working zone, which lead to a progressive multiple
line failure of components that had be pre worn by fair lead contact.

• One suffered a failure due to the unsheathed mooring cable rubbing un-noticed
on a rock on the seabed.

• One suffered a fatigue failure of an anchor chain due to a chain link continuously
slapping against the sharp edges of a fairlead, which lead to fatigue failure of the
chain. When the other chains in the system were also examined similar damage
was found on them. Consequently, the primary causes of the incident were
identified as the detailed design of the fairlead and the lack of rotation of chain
through it to spread the wear zone and fatigue loading. To prevent the incident
from re-occurring the top sections of all the lines were changed out and the
fairlead design was changed. The lessons learnt from this, was that detailed
design of the fairlead should be carefully undertaken and that chain should be
routinely rotated through fairleads to spread any damage and so lengthen the
working life of the chain. In addition to which, the fact that the top section of each
mooring line was designed to be changed out facilitated the quick resolution of
the problem.

It was noted that the Bomel JIP had shown that the fatigue life of chain passing
through a fairlead was 1.5 times less than that of chain in free water.

• Further to the incidents identified in the discussion, another FPSO mooring

system failure has been identified from offshore Brazil. This incident occurred in
Ultra Deep water, where the snatching of the fibre ropes onto the mooring chain
connecting the ropes to the anchor and vessel caused the chain links to become
elongated and suffer fatigue failure.
The most important fact to come out of all of these incidents was that the majority of
them had the potential for multiple line failure. This was due to the fact that where a
component had failed in one line the components in the other lines were also showing
signs of failure.

E.1.3 Records
A lot of information can be deduced from the Health & Safety Executive report on

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‘Accident Statistics for Mobile Offshore units on the UK Continental Shelf 1980-
1998’. The data contained within this report is from the following databases: FOCUS
(UK KSE – Field Operations Division), Sun Safety System (UK HSE – Offshore
Safety Division), MAIB accident database (UK Marine Accidents Investigation
Bureau), Offshore Blowout Database (SINTEF, Norway), WOAD (DNV, Norway).
By integrating these databases the majority of known incidents can be found and so
statistics deduced, however, because only 60 FPSO operational years are covered by
the database the variance of the data will be high and thus its reliability low. This
contrasts greatly to MODUs where the number of operational years covered by the
integrated databases is 1145 and so the variance will be relatively low and so the data
can be relied on.
The problem with the data presented in the report is that it is good for calculating
failure probabilities but it is not good for predicting which parts of the system will
fail as it does not cover the failure detail. It was therefore noted form the discussion at
the workshop session that:

• Records of incidents and their follow up actions are not easily attainable to allow
everyone to learn from them.

• Lessons learned is the most effective way of feeding back to future and current
UKOOA members.
E.2 Consequence and Criticality
E.2.1 Safety Criticality
It was noted that a careful choice of words was needed when discussing ‘safety
critical’ elements. There is of course a legal definition of the term given in UK SCR
and DCR documents paraphrased as (any system whose failure would make
significant contributions to the development, mitigation or control of a major
accident hazard). However several members of the workshop took the view that the
mooring system is not absolutely safety critical because it is one of a number of
prevention systems and not necessarily the most important. The following choice of
words was adopted to describe the safety criticality of the mooring system within this
study:

In most cases the mooring related safety and environmental risks can be reduced to
ALARP levels by attention to the detailed design of sub-sea protection, emergency
shut down, hull damage control, emergency propulsion systems etc. However the
capital costs of these provisions and the remaining commercial exposure, (lost
production etc.) often leads to a requirement for high reliability mooring systems for
floating production applications.

From the data to date it was noted that:

• So far all but one of the failures were single line failures but with the opportunity
for multiple line failures, as the failure mechanism was due to the detailed design
of the mooring lines.
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• 95% of the mooring requirement is to protect the riser.

• The safety criticality of the mooring system tends to be fairly well managed by
existing means, with the exception of the general degradation of the system due to
bad design of connectors.

• Lack of reliability of monitoring systems means that 1st line failure can be missed,
this is a concern as being on station with one line missing gives the biggest
contribution to total system failure.

• In the majority of cases the thruster systems on the units have not been designed
to assist the passive mooring system as the owners do not want the thruster
system to become safety critical. However, the failure of a thruster system would,
in the majority of cases, simply put the system into a one-system (line) failure
mode. Consequently, assuming that a system can be quickly re-established there
is no reason why it can not be included in the mooring system. However, by not
including thruster assistance the mooring system is conservative.

From the general discussion it was noted that:

• It might be more appropriate for FPSOs/FSUs to move over to a watch circle

orientated design and monitoring system, by which the operational circle and
shutdown circles are defined. This would then allow the designer to design the
mooring system to the riser and by the use of alarm circles would allow the
operators to identify line failures as the weather rose.

• That safety may be managed at to high a level, particularly during design, and so
items can ‘slip through the net’ without any major impact on the safety case.
E.2.2 Environmental Impact
As 95% of the mooring requirement is to protect the riser it is also there to protect
the environment.
E.2.3 Business Impact
To date all of the failures have had an impact to a greater of lesser extent on
production. Therefore the management of the integrity of the mooring system is
important in reducing to ALARP levels the risk to production and hence business
impact.

E.3 Key Failure Modes

E.3.1 Material Defect
Chain Cables
Most failures used to occur in MODU chain cables because of poor manufacturing
quality control and consequent embrittlement of chain cables. The fact that this is no
longer the case is mainly due to DNV Certification note 2.6 that deals principally

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with chain cable quality control. Nowadays, wear or fatigue is a much more likely
source of failure and this means that the so called "random" failures are now much
less likely than those due to long term degradation. This means that is much more
likely that a system will experience damage to a number of components.
Wire Cables

• Performance varies immensely between different manufacturers, as behaviour

under load and fatigue life is dependent on pre-tensioning of individual strands.

• Sheathing of wire rope means that defects are harder to find, but unsheathed wire
can sustain damage more easily.

• Long term fatigue performance is much lower in wires that have

E.3.2 Overload / Overstress
• Tends not to happen, as design system is FOS based.
• Buchan Mooring line FOS was 1.25 but still on station.
• Richard Chaplin of Reading University is looking into wire rope strain failures.
E.3.3 Fatigue
After much discussion the following points were noted:

• Fatigue life in air is much shorter than in sea water, although the reasons for this
are not yet fully understood although several theories have been put forward.

• The knowledge base on fatigue resistance may exceed the knowledge base on
fatigue loading.

• As FPSO mooring systems can not easily be repaired a FOS should be put into
the fatigue life to take account of this.

• A lot of work on the fatigue life of wire ropes, chain cables, common links etc. has
been undertaken but the failures that are being seen are in connectors and
terminations and it is believed that these may be fatigued related.

• The fatigue of connectors and terminations is not well understood and no S_N
curve data is available for the majority of types.

• It was noted that the patent on the standard kenter design was registered in 1903
and all connectors are potentially susceptible to high stress concentrations that
can accelerate fatigue failure.

• There may be a need for standard design details for connectors and terminations,
and this may need to extend to type approval.

• There is a need for a guidance document on using and designing connectors,

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which should include modern day design details.

• It is not known whether manufacturing quality control extends to connector
manufacturers, and it was further noted that the ability to control the quality of
items produced by forging is very difficult.

• Consequently, FPSOs/FSOs should think carefully about using kenters etc. in

their mooring systems without adequate factors of safety on the fatigue life, as
within MODU circles the life of these components is taken as 5 years whereas the
typical FPSO mooring design life is 20 years.

• Introduction of toque or swivels causing wire rope to loose its angular fixity will
cause a reduction in the wire rope strength and fatigue life. API codes and
associated S-N curves assume that both ends of the wire rope are fixed and in
their original angular alignment. Consequently, wire rope needs to be carefully
installed and swivels avoided at all costs.

E.3.4 Brittle Failure

• Bad detailed design, such as a lead plug over a high tensile pin in a lower tensile
casting can lead to hydrogen embrittlement. Good detailed design of the mooring
and corrosion protection system is therefore paramount in order to prevent this
sort of failure.

E.3.5 Corrosion
There is evidence of corrosion related failures, therefore the following items need to
be considered:

• Wire ropes will deteriorate very quickly if they are in the splash zone and are
very difficult if not impossible to inspect if they are sheathed.

• The most common cause of corrosion problems is different materials being used
in proximity to each other. Consequently, good detailed design of all aspects of
the mooring and corrosion prevention system is important.

• In a number of cases the corrosion prevention system may be inadequate.

E.3.6 Wear / Abrasion
• Fairleads and long term mooring do not go hand in hand due to:
• Operability
• Wear on pockets
• Damaged caused by pockets to chains particularly with relative movement
• Fairleads are difficult to repair
• High relative motions between components will cause wear, abrasion and

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possibly fatigue damage.

• Retrieval and installation by grappling causes the majority of abrasion
damage to moorings.

• It is not possible to protect risers or wire rope sheathing against fishing gear
damage.
E.4 The Design Process
E.4.1 Environmental Data
• There is a lack of common standards between the codes and individual operators
on environmental data and its gathering.

• ISO document will standardise process for putting together environmental data
for a location.

• Current data is hard to determine particularly in top 50m, consequently, current

loading particularly on risers and mooring lines is hard to determine.

• Directional divergence may mean that worst case scenarios or more common
scenarios are not being analysed.
E.4.2 Correct identification of codes being used
• A design review should be undertaken early on in the design process to identify
gaps in the codes and standards so that suitable criteria can be drawn up.

• There may be a need for supplements to augment codes and standards on

connector and termination design.

• There is a need for the design of individual components to be linked into the
design of the overall system.
E.4.3 Fatigue included in design from start
Designers need to concentrate more effort into the designing the individual
components of the system to have a long enough fatigue life and not just the overall
design.
E.4.5 Correct identification of design and fatigue lives
In at least one instance because of capital control the fatigue life of the non-
inspectable mooring system components was taken as 10 times the field life instead of
the FPSO life. The net result of this being that some of the non-inspectable
components may be more susceptible to fatigue failure near the end of the field life
than might otherwise have been desirable.

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E.5 Codes and Standards

E.5.1 Statutory & Verification Codes
Overall there are gaps in the codes, regulations and recommended practice
documents, particularly in the following areas:

• Component design
• Inspection methods and philosophies
• System thinking/concept/design
• Discard Criteria
E.6 Manufacturing and Construction
E.6.1 Quality Control
• There may be a need for standard design details for connectors and terminations,
and this may need to extend to type approval.

• The manufacturing standard for connectors does have the same if not better
quality control than for chain, however this does not necessarily guarantee
reliability in service because of the type of components involved and the potential
for designers to develop "one off connectors" . Surface quality control of forgings
is inherently difficult.

E.6.2 Certification
• There is a need for original material used in wire rope, chain cables, connectors
and terminations to be certified at its place of manufacture to ensure quality
control throughout the manufacturing process.

• There may be a need for certification of connectors and terminations to ensure

their adequate design and the quality of their manufacture, particularly where the
item is forged.
E.6.3 Non Destructive Testing
• Will not identify all critical failure modes prior to failures.
• Once failure is visible to NDT then 95% of fatigue life has been used up.
• NDT can not be expected to find anything other than gross defects.
E.6.4 Handling
Damage during handling at factory, during load out and transportation is not
quantifiable.

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E.7 Installation
A number of items came out from this part of the discussion, the salient points being:

• Installation is the most common time for moorings (especially wire or fibre
ropes) to be damaged this is highlighted by the number of failures that have
occurred soon after moorings have been installed.

• Effective planning and continually monitoring of the installation process is key to

avoiding damage, including twist, to the mooring lines during installation and to
ensure that the moorings are installed according to the mooring design.

• Sparing and replacement should be designed in form the start, as there is likely
to be a 3+ month lead-time on replacement mooring components.

• There may be a need for a UKOOA wide spares list so that mooring components
can be replaced quickly with items of similar or greater grade.
E.8 Monitoring
E.8.1 Reliable systems
Not all FPSOs/FSUs have monitoring systems in relation to the mooring system and
its integrity. Of the units that do have such systems their reliability and effectiveness
is highly questionable.
It is therefore highly desirable that these systems should be designed in from the start
using proven marine specific technology.
E.8.2 Position Monitoring
As 95% of the function of the mooring system is to protect the risers, monitoring the
rig position and therefore the riser angle etc. is very important. Monitoring the
vessels excursions is also needed to decide whether to shutdown the risers etc. or
whether a line has failed.

E.8.3 Line Tension Monitoring

When fitted the readings from these systems are useful in deciding whether a line has
failed. However, in benign conditions careful interpretation of the data may be
needed to decide whether a line has failed. The actual tension that is recorded is not
as important as the trend of the tensions as this can give more information on the
status of the mooring system e.g. a spike loading on several lines followed by a
slightly higher than normal load may indicate a single line failure.

E.8.4 Active Control Monitoring

No discussion
E.8.5 Failure Monitoring and Identification

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The identification that a failure has occurred is important in protecting the mooring
system from total loss, as mooring with one line missing is the biggest contributor to
the risk of total system loss. However, a large proportion of the systems in use at the
moment are inadequate when it comes to this identification and more often they are
used to confirm the suspicion that the crew has that something is amiss.

E.9 Inspection
E.9.1 In Service Inspection
The value of in service inspection is highly debatable but it is the method required by
the classification societies.
E.9.2 Beach Inspection
This is useful in checking the status of a mooring line and allows for destructive
testing. However, whilst the line is being taken out it is probably easier to do a simply
change out the line rather than return the inspected line. There is however a risk
involved in changing out a line out and so a conservative belts and braces approach
with over-sized moorings may be more appropriate.

E.9.3 In Water Survey

The value of in water survey is very minimal and its only real value is in confirming
whether the mooring system is intact and perhaps confirming the status of the
cathodic protection system.
E.9.4 Survey Philosophy & Inspection Requirements
This varies greatly from one installation to another and very little guidance is given
by the classification societies, instead each case is developed on a base by base basis
and there is no clarity or consistency in the system.
E.10 Discard
E.10.1 Criteria
• There should be a discard criterion for mooring system components agreed,
between the operator and classification society/verification body, early in the
project so that the mooring system can be designed to allow for change out if
required.

E.11 FPSO Heading and Response

E.11.1 Philosophy
Different units have different philosophies on how to control the vessels heading.
Some units have enough power to damage their own mooring systems and other have
no heading control at all. It was also noted that a number of FPSOs/FSOs are
susceptible to heading instability.

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E.12 Human Factors

E.12.1 Human Error
• Competency of operators & designers
• Marine standards
• De-marinisation
• Precautionary principles, is the glass hull full or half empty?
• Human interface with monitoring system
• Heading control and data interpretation requires a lot of skill.
All parties involved in the design, build and installation of FPSO/FSUs should have
practical experience in this area.
'One off’ items in the mooring system should be avoided.
The design of the interface between personnel and the mooring system monitoring
devices should be carefully considered so as the information needed by personnel to
identify a line failure is readily available and they are trained in its use.

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