API RP 17H

This Recommended Practice (RP) provides functional requirements and guidelines for ROV/ROT/AUV interfaces in subsea production fields for the petroleum and natural gas industries. It is applicable to both the selection and use of ROV/ROT/AUV interfaces related to subsea production equipment and provides guidance on design as well as the operational requirements for maximizing the potential of standardized equipment and design principles. This RP identifies the issues to be considered when designing for ROV/ROT/AUV operations to interact with (or near) subsea production systems. The framework and specifications set out enables the user (whether they may be on the ROV/ROT/AUV side or production facility side) to design the appropriate interface for a specific application. These interfaces include subsea docking, recharging, data transfer, data harvesting, and mechanical intervention.

This document does not cover manned intervention, internal wellbore intervention, internal flowline inspection, tree running and tree running equipment. However, all the related subsea ROV/ROT/AUV interfaces are covered by this standard. It is applicable to the selection, design and operation of ROTs, ROVs and AUVs including ROV tooling, hereafter defined as “subsea intervention systems”.

This document defines four major categories of hot stabs and describes the geometry to maintain compatibility across all manufacturers. The categories were first introduced in Technical Report 17TR15 which described several common or previously used hydraulic hot stab and receptacle configurations.

NOTE The third edition of this document incorporates the content of API 17TR15 and the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Interfaces. Technical Report 17TR15 clarified and defined the most commonly used hot stab types, as well as documented some obsolete sizes. The goal of the technical report was to increase standardization, and to maintain backward compatibility and interchangeability with existing installations and with previous publications (API 17H, API 53, and API 16D).