BP were developing the first deep water oil and gas fields, namely the Schiehallion and Foinaven fields located west of the Shetland Islands.  The fields were at a depth of 350m to 600m below the water surface.  Because of the depth, the subsea completion of the wells had to be done by remotely operated vehicles.  That entailed installing pipelines from the well heads (“Christmas trees”) to the central manifolds.  During that operation, the pipelines would have a pull-head attached at each end.  The friction experienced by the pipelines as they were dragged across the seabed was important in planning the subsea completion process.

The Scope of Work included extensive experimental investigations of the interaction of the subsea completion modules with seabed soils post laydown. Focus was on the interaction of the structure with the soil during the final phases of the installation.  During the laboratory pull-in tests, model loads were measured and scaling arguments were developed and applied in order to quantify prototype loads.