Conventionally, it is known to use flexible conduits such as hoses to transport fluids such as wellbore reservoir stimulation fluids from a vessel on the sea surface to the wellhead located on the seabed, the flexible conduit thus providing a conduit for the said fluids through the seawater column. Conventionally, it is also known to use a steel cable to lower a distribution manifold or clump weight used in subsea applications to the seabed, and in order to provide strength/tension support to the flexible hose by securing the flexible hose to the said steel cable e.g. from a crane or reeler unit, the steel cable thus being used to lower the flexible hose from the vessel on the sea surface all the way down to the seabed, the steel cable therefore taking the weight of the flexible hose. This arrangement is used because conventional flexible hoses are simply not strong enough to be able to take and support their own weight, particularly given that the length of the flexible hose that is required may be many hundreds of meters or over one kilometer in length.
Alternatively, instead of using such conventional flexible hose, it is also known to use coiled tubing which is typically a metal pipe in the region of one to three inches in diameter and which may be coiled around a reel and which typically would not require to be strapped to a steel cable from a crane or reeler unit cable because it is typically capable of supporting its own weight when in seawater. However, coiled tubing suffers from the disadvantage that it requires specialist equipment and personnel on-board the vessel to deploy it and also it is relatively heavy when stored on the reel and therefore it is not as readily transportable, for instance on an airplane as a lighter weight flexible conduit reel. Furthermore, coiled tubing can typically only be used a certain number of times before it requires to be scrapped because the uncoiling and coiling of it off and onto the reel, in addition to flexing during operations, causes fatigue in the coiled tubing.
Such conventional flexible hose or coiled tubing is typically used to provide a conduit through which fluids such as well stimulation fluids or fluids to commission a pipeline located on or in the subsea surface or to transfer fluids for use in emergency well situations in order to e.g. inject chemical dispersant in the event of a loss of hydrocarbon containment. The fluids will typically be pumped into or injected into or in the vicinity of a wellhead which is located on the subsea surface or it may be pumped into other well equipment for maintenance or other purposes.
It is therefore desirable to be able to provide a relatively lightweight load bearing flexible conduit which does not require to be secured to a steel cable or the like. It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome some or many of the disadvantages or at least mitigate the disadvantages of the prior art and provide a system with a number of technical and commercial advantages over the prior art systems.