Condition Monitoring Maximizes Reliability Of Subsea Equipment By Eric Smedstad H OUSTON-Each subsea installation is unique and presents its own set of technical and operational demands. In the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, the challenges for the subsea infrastructure connected to the floating production, storage and offloading system are quite different than those associated with the subsea production system with water injection and gas li at a tension leg platform-based development. However, no matter how complex-from a single-well tieback to an existing platform to seafloor processing and compression-every subsea project shares a common objective: Once installed, equipment must perform reliably over an asset's life cycle to mitigate the need for costly unplanned interventions. In fact, the subsea pumps, boosting and compression systems being installed today are expected to function properly for 30 years under demanding operating conditions. e key to maximizing subsea equipment uptime is the ability to recognize and understand the condition of each component in a subsea layout. Consequently, surveillance and instrumentation technologies that allow operators to proactively manage the integrity of equipment under thousands of feet of water increasingly are becoming core elements of subsea developments. 50 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER