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Abstract
Flow assurance is a deepwater challenge in our industry. Flow
assurance is successful operations that generate a reliable,
manageable, and profitable flow of fluids from the reservoir to
the sales point. Flow assurance is a critical function for
economic production in deepwater. The significant limits of
access to seafloor infrastructure in deepwater (> 1200 ft. water
depth) transforms operational problems in shallow water
production into economic, life limiting events for deepwater
assets. Significant operations, project, installation, fabrication,
engineering, science, and business efforts are focusing on
developing and implementing solutions for successful
production in deepwater assets. These efforts are identifying
that integration of the proficiencies of these separate
disciplines is critical to successful implementation of cost
effective, production reliability.
Flow assurance is transformed into a cross-functional, team
discipline that drives a holistic, integrated perspective of asset
development from project conception to production operations
and from reservoir to beyond the sales point. The flow
assurance discipline is demanding due to its diverse nature. It
requires a simple, success strategy. This strategy can be
defined by the components Proficiency, Integration,
Implementation, and Improvement or simply PI3 (3).
Introduction
Flow assurance in the oil and gas industry has taken on new
dimensions as the industry has progressed into deeper water,
the access to subsea infrastructure becomes increasingly
limited, and as accelerated project schedules are required to
meet the economic hurdles required in an expanding corporate
portfolio. A flow assurance discipline assists our respective
corporations, projects, and operations with insuring the design
L.D. BROWN
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Hydrate Management
Scientific knowledge of hydrates has significantly advanced in
the last ten years. Simulators predict the hydrate propensity
against the design options. We can predict hydrate
disassociation within one to three degrees with the exception
of brines that have high salt concentration. The hydrate
disassociation curves typically provide conservative limits for
hydrate management design. The effects of thermodynamic
hydrate inhibitors, THIs, such as methanol and ethylene
glycols can be predicted with acceptable accuracy. THIs are
used successfully for hydrate prevention, but can require up to
1 bbl of THI per bbl of water produced.
L.D. BROWN
OTC 14010
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Paraffin Management
Paraffin deposition can be considered a steady state issue
relative to multiphase transport such as slugging. Simulation
and prediction of wax deposition has provided the industry
with fairly conservative estimations for remediation frequency
of risers and pipelines. Science has captured that the paraffin
fraction of the composition that must be measured via
specialized HTGC methods. In addition, the thermal gradient
and mass transfer at the pipe wall are recognized as the
mechanisms that drive deposition. This has allowed
appropriate thermal management design through the use of
widely available wax deposition simulators. However, one
must be cautioned that multiphase, wax deposition simulators
that also provide multiphase transport results should be based
on validated transport simulators.
The conservatism of the wax deposition predictions is getting
challenged. Operations are typically not experiencing wax
buildup at the pigging frequency predicted by the wax
deposition simulators. This conservatism, in part, drives
whether round trip pigging is required with the associated two
flow lines and manifold valving or if a reduced pigging
frequency supports a subsea pig launcher that can replace a
flow line or if activley heated systems can be considered as
viable option to no pigging. Chemical paraffin inhibitors can
assist with reducing the pigging frequency if they can be
injected at a point where the temperature is above the wax
appearance temperature over the lifecycle of the tieback.
One of the main challenges for paraffin management is
reliable and economic, one way pigging with a subsea pig
launcher. This includes the efficiency of the pigging operation
and the reliability of predicting the risk of sticking the pig in
the line. Generally, low heat transfer at the wall supports
porous wax deposits that are easier to pig than the dense
deposits resulting from large heat transfer gradients at the
wall. The low heat transfer option would be typical of
insulated flow lines.
Asphaltene Management
Asphaltenes are black, gummy, and slick. What is an
asphaltene is not scientifically, well defined. Precipitation
from the stock tank oil with various solvents having different
solubility parameters is the normal method of classification.
In the well bore, the onset of asphaltene precipitation for
unstable asphaltenic oils occurs above the saturation pressure.
A quick assessment of this asphaltene instability was
developed by deBoar and continues to be a first estimate that
is made possible using PVT data from a constant composition
expansion experiment. New high pressure, in-situ flocculation
experiments allow us to measure the flocculation pressure and
even see the asphaltene particles within the crude. However,
the ability to simulate the fraction of asphaltenes deposited is
not available.
Asphaltene deposition occurs as the flocculation pressure
moves down the well bore tubing. Typically, asphaltene
L.D. BROWN
OTC 14010
Integrity Management
Facilities design and integrity monitoring is the stuff from
which lifecycle, infrastructure integrity is built. Corrosivity
analysis from reservoir to sales point is fundamental.
Materials selection and appropriate welding practices must be
determined early in the project. The external and the internal
integrity of equipment and facilities must be measured.
Sand/silt/solids management must be implemented from
completions to topsides equipment. Chemical and fluid
capatibilities with seals must be addressed. Operations
integrity of utility fluid chemistry, compressors, pumps,
meters, and control systems must be addressed. Coupled
dynamic process and multiphase simulation can provide
virtual testing. Topsides layout needs to accommodate
remediation by coiled tubing for risers and subsea center SCRs
in addition to all the other equipment. Monitoring points must
be safely accessible during operations and be positioned to
monitor the information required. Alarm targets must be
identified. Data acquistion systems and databases must be
maintained to record and track trends. Data, trends, and
alarms must be monitored. Team and personnel integrity must
be maintained.
Integrity management requires front end loading the nth year of
operations into the conceptual design team. The operations
team meets the project design team in integrity management.
There is a wide variation in the industry as to when the
operations team meets the project design team. Within some
projects, the Operations Interface Manager (OIM) has a team
that is integrated into the project team. When this is the case,
the operations team typically becomes the projects customer
for integrity and operability management.
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