Subsea Integrity Management: How to Be Proactive on Systems With Limited Feedback

Abstract Integrity and safety management for subsea infrastructure can be challenging. On the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), over 500 subsea installations, 15,000 km of pipelines, and 750 risers have been installed. These numbers are expected to increase in the future [18]. It is also expected that there will be an increasing number of applications for field life extensions. Compared to equipment on a surface facility, operation, and follow-up of integrity for seabed infrastructure has limitations. Performing maintenance, modification and inspections often requires a marine campaign. And both access and possibility for more frequent verification are more limited. Hence there is an increased focus from the Norwegian authorities to maintain and continuously improve the integrity management for subsea assets. This has resulted in reports on the topic, commissioned by Havtil [1][2][3][4] in combination with supervisory activities. Based on these reports and activities three topics are extracted: Proactivity, Barriers, and Human and Organizational factors. These are elaborated subjects in the safety literature. In this paper the reports on subsea integrity are reviewed in light of this literature to see where the subsea integrity management can be improved.