The symposium was opened by John Keepax of Shell Exploration and Production. John started by describing his own background and experience as a qualified control engineer, having cut his teeth on the Cormorant project, he is now a subsea engineer for Shell in Aberdeen. He described the increasing length of umbilicals, starting with around 1.5 km lengths in 1990 up to the present maximum length of 96 km, and some early design problems. These included the perceived need for a torque balanced umbilical, even though such techniques were not being used by the telecommunications industries for their subsea cables. He had seen the terminations reduce in size dramatically over the period of his involvement, and where separate electrical and hydraulic cables were used originally now the integrated approach is totally accepted.
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