Paraffin and Hydrate: Overcoming the Huddle in Subsea Tie-Back

Long subsea tiebacks to existing host facilities are of great interest to many offshore operators
since they allow for fast-tracked projects, help maximize the value in using existing
infrastructure, and they maintain throughput for the host facility as older well production
declines. With flowline length having increased over the years, the economic impact of dual
flowlines has become prohibitive, thus raising operator interest in single-line tiebacks. However,
while they can be beneficial, an expert said that long tiebacks have their own potential pitfalls,
with flowline blockages being a major hazard.

In a presentation held by the Society of Underwater Technology—Houston, Melissa Gould

examined the advantages and disadvantages of long subsea tiebacks, including operator concerns
of hydrate or paraffin blockages that may occur when using them. Gould is a principal at Stress
Engineering Services, leading the subsea pipeline, equipment, and controls group in the
company’s upstream practice.

Fig. 1 details the number of blocked flowlines in the US Gulf of Mexico reported to the US
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) from 1978 to 2014. Of the 124
blocked flowlines reported, 99 have been identified as paraffin blockages, and 25 were identified
as hydrate blockages.

Fig. 1—Data compiled by the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement shows
a general upward trend in the number of plugs caused by hydrates and paraffins.
BSEE did not include blockages caused by asphaltenes in its reporting, nor did it include
temporary hydrate blockages that did not force the shutdown of a flowline, but regardless Gould
said the data indicated an upward trend, and the industry must examine why these blockages are
still occurring. If operators cannot solve the blockage issue for shorter dual-flowline tiebacks,
they could not be confident of success with long tiebacks. In asking this question to different
operators, Gould said she received a plethora of answers.

“When I asked various operators that question, this is when all bets were off. I had one operator
tell me that they had done an internal analysis of every one of their blockages and they all came
back to human error. I had another operator that was adamant that it was whether or not the field
was properly designed for the full field life at the start. This operator was adamant that you spent
the money and you did your design work upfront for the full life, and actually spent your Capex
ahead of time, that would reduce your Capex quite a bit. We had the full range of answers
depending on who we spoke with,” she said.

Some common methods established during the design phase of a project to prevent hydrate
formation include passive flowline insulation such as wet insulation or pipe-in-pipe. Operators
could also rely on continuous or intermittent injection of either a chemical inhibitor, methanol,
glycol, or a low-dosage hydrate inhibitor (LDHI), though Gould said injection comes with its
own pitfalls like high costs and logistical difficulties.

Gould said that if a chemical injection is defined either on a continuous or intermittent basis, the
prescribed dosage rate of the chemical must be rigorously maintained, with the downtime not
exceeding the defined limit. Periodic sampling and requalifying of the chemical inhibitors in
changing field conditions is also important, along with frequent monitoring of the flowline for
buildup on the pipe wall.

There are several commonly available mitigation and remediation methods for operators to use
when chemical injection fails, including pressure blowdown, hot-oil treatment, pressure
pulsation, warm-solvent washing, and coiled tubing intervention for flushing and cutting a
hydrate blockage. Companies are also examining newer techniques such as localized flowline
heating through electrically traced heated blankets and other methods, as well as injecting high
density/low-surface-tension chemicals into the flowline.

Active flowline heating systems can also be effective at preventing hydrate formation. Gould
discussed three such systems: direct electrical heating (DEH) with wet insulation or pipe-in-pipe,
electric trace heating (ETH) with pipe-in-pipe, and electric heating in an integrated production
bundle.
 A DEH system (Fig. 2) includes a riser
cable supplying power from the platform to the seabed. A feeder cable connects the riser cable to
the flowline and a piggyback cable, which conducts the current to the far end of the flowline. The
heating system is electrically connected to the seabed through sacrificial anodes which must be
rated for corrosion protection and sufficient grounding of the system.

ETH with pipe-in-pipe has only been executed in one field: Total’s Islay Field, located 440 km
northeast of Aberdeen in the UK North Sea. Developed by Technip for use in the field, the
system brings active heating through three-phase electrical tracing cables that end with a star
connection where the sum of the three current phases is zero. This avoids the need for a current
returning path. Tracing cables run below the thermal insulation and are in contact with the
flowline. Gould said this improves power transmission from the electrical cables to the fluid,
thus minimizing heat loss, and overall power consumption is lower compared to a DEH system.

Video: A closer look at the flowline system for Total's Islay field. To mitigate hydrate issues,
Total utilized an electrically trace heated pipe-in-pipe system.

Gas Hydrate: A Matter of Risk?

Hydrate blockages can wreak financial havoc on operators. Companies looking to avoid the
deferred production and remediation costs incurred by hydrate issues often design and operate
fields with a philosophy of avoiding hydrate formation. However, a flow assurance engineer at
BP said that this philosophy may not be sufficient as operators move to more extreme
environments, and that a shift in focus from complete avoidance to an overall risk management
strategy may be warranted.

At a technical session held during the 2017 Offshore Technology Conference, Anjushri Kurup
spoke about the evolution of BP’s hydrate management philosophy for a dry tree facility in the
US Gulf of Mexico.

The unnamed facility Kurup discussed operates in 4,500-ft water depth. The asset has several
producing wells with water cuts ranging from 15 to 70%. He said that the asset was originally
designed to avoid any hydrate formation, but that philosophy changed as water cuts increased
and wells were put on gas lift. As a result, BP shifted away from a hydrate avoidance strategy to
one focused on the efficient management of hydrate blockage risk, with the understanding that
hydrate formation is not a guarantee of future hydrate blockage.
Fig. 1 illustrates the hydrate management philosophy. The hazard was the simultaneous
production of oil, gas, and water that could lead to hydrate formation and a blockage in the
production tubing.

BP’s hydrate
management strategy for an unnamed dry tree facility
in the US Gulf of Mexico. Credit: OTC 27780.

The left side of the figure shows the preventative barriers put in place to avoid hydrate
formation:

 Tubing/riser insulation. During steady-state production, the fluids are warm enough to
be outside the hydrate-forming range and, hence, the tubing insulation acts as the
preventative barrier. In the case of a shutdown the tubing insulation keeps the fluids
warm temporarily, but cold ambient temperatures may cause the fluids to cool down,
creating conditions for hydrate formation.

 Dead oil displacement. Kurup said that use of dead oil to displace production fluids
down the dry tree tubing into the reservoir is the most relied-upon barrier for hydrate
management. For unplanned shutdowns, it is the only available barrier.

 LDHI pre-treatment. In a planned shutdown, Kurup said fluids can be pretreated with
an injection of a low-dosage hydrate inhibitor [LDHI], but that this is not a preferred
solution to shutdowns of long duration.

 Low gas/oil ratio. At the dry tree facility, fluids with low gas/oil ratios were not reported
to have any hydrate blockages.

Should all the preventive barriers fail, other mitigating barriers such as depressurization and hot
oil circulation using thermodynamic inhibitors, such as methanol, monoethylene glycol, or
nitrogen, could be used.

Following a shutdown, fluids cool down to the cold ambient conditions. In order to prevent
hydrate blockage in the tubing, BP’s philosophy was to perform hydrate safe-out measures—
measures implemented to prevent hydrate formation—within the cooldown time. However, even
the cooldown times for each well in the asset ranged from 1 to 4 hours depending on whether the
wells produced with gas lift. Kurup said these cooldown times were problematic.

“With such low cooldown times, it becomes very difficult operationally to employ any kind of
hydrate safe-out measures in such a short period of time, especially when you have multiple
wells that you have to look out for,” she said.

BP altered its hydrate management strategy to account for this and other issues. The no-touch
time was increased, particularly for wells that were not being gas lifted. Kurup said this offered
several advantages, including reduced wear and tear of the dead oil pumps and decreased
topsides burden of processing dead oil from the tubing. The overall strategy centered around a
reliance on the correlation between predicted hydrate volume fraction at the operating gas/oil
ratio, the production water cut, and the risk of hydrate blockage.

For Further Reading

OTC 27780 Pushing Conventional Boundaries of Hydrate Management in a Dry Tree Facility
by A.S. Kurup, T. Idstein, C.A. Zamora et al., BP

PetroBrass Flow Assurance Strategy Based Past Experience

As Petrobras delved into deepwater developments in the 1970s and 1980s, the need for strong
wax and hydrate prevention and remediation efforts led the company to try new strategies and
technologies that have now become standard operating procedures, an expert said.

At a presentation hosted by the SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section, Kazuioshi Minami spoke
about the lessons Petrobras learned in flow assurance issues over the past 4 decades, including
wax and hydrate buildup. Minami held several positions specializing in artificial lift and fluid
flow during a 28-year career at Petrobras, including research scientist, project leader, program
coordinator, and technical manager. He retired from the company in 2016.

Minami said good field samples with proper lab characterization are mandatory for an adequate
wax prevention system. Operators should use reliable thermal multiphase models to calibrate
against field data. While it is important to have flow occur above the wax appearance
temperature (WAT) in steady state, he said a sporadic long shut-in of a well is an acceptable
practice. In cases involving high WATs, Minami said insulated flowlines and extended reach
wells were economic options.

Once an operator identifies the potential for wax deposition in a flowline, Minami said it is
critical to keep the line as clean as possible to avoid the sudden onset of a plug.

“Sometimes, you don’t see a production decline right away and you think everything is ok, but
suddenly you can have a plug. My recommendation is to clean this line frequently,” he said.
Remediation of an existing plug requires patience. Minami suggested gradual pigging as a
solution to clogs that slowly agglomerate in pipelines and flowlines, but operators must be
prepared to replace segments of pipe if the clog is too severe.

“Be patient and persistent to remove the plug,” he said. “It’s not very easy. If you give up, it’s
done. You have to replace the line. But, if you insist, these recommendations could help.”

Hydrates presented different challenges for Petrobras. Minami said that, because hydrate
envelopes are dissociation curves, they need a fair amount of sub-cooling before they form in a
pipeline or flowline. Operators can use this as a safety cushion: Minami suggested that
production systems be designed to operate outside of the hydrate envelope in steady-state
conditions for the life of the field. He acknowledged, however, that system designs may vary
based on locality.

“Our experience is completely different from the experience of someone working in the Gulf of
Mexico, and because of that we are probably less conservative in designing our systems,”
Minami said.

In the case of an extended shutdown, Minami said it was important to gradually lower well
pressure as soon as possible. If not, hydrates may form and agglomerate once the well is opened.
He also said that startup is the most critical operation for a well, and operators must develop
proper operational procedures to avoid hydrate plugs because plugs are difficult to remove once
they appear. Petrobras voided several plugs because of its strict operational procedure of shutting
down a well as hydrates begin to form, injecting ethanol down the well, and then re-opening it.

Managing the Effects of Sand Erosion

Sand-producing reservoirs contain a growing percentage of the world’s hydrocarbon reserves,

and the erosion from produced sand in a flowing system can had a significant effect on oil and
gas operations, damaging production wells, pipelines, flowlines, and topside facilities.
Irreversible material loss of the internal pipe surfaces could lead to a loss of containment,
resulting in system failure at significant cost to an operator.

The methods to mitigate the effects of sand erosion are numerous and varied depending on the
system in operation. A closer look reveals that new technologies to help control erosion in real
time may be on the horizon.

Mitigation Techniques

In its recommended practice on sand production and erosion management (RP-O501), DNV GL
suggested that sand should be separated as early in the process stream as possible. Einar Stokke,
a senior engineer of pipelines and flow at DNV GL, said the type of system in question will
dictate the optimal realistic point to separate flow. For instance, with a subsea system it is
common to separate sand in a regular process separator with flushing systems installed to inject
water at predefined intervals, fluidizing the sand bed that typically forms at the bottom of the
separator. This can be done periodically during production.

“Naturally, if you have a subsea system, you will have challenges when it comes to removing the
sand before it reaches the topside. There are systems which do that. Usually if you have subsea
wells and you have sand production, you tend to do something about this the moment you reach
topside,” Stokke said.

In RP-O501, DNV stated that the size and shape of pipe components, in combination with the
sand particle size and fluid properties like density and viscosity, can influence the amount of
erosion caused by sand. Stokke said companies should look to select pipe diameters that are as
large as possible for their systems if they wish to maintain a high level of production while
keeping moderate flow velocities.

In addition, pipeline systems with more gradual inner and outer bends—as opposed to a 90°
elbow or a blind tee—may have a lower erosion potential. The geometrical shape of these
components causes the flow to change direction, and the particles impact the walls which, in
turn, has a corrosive effect on the walls.

The primary goal with any erosion mitigation technique is to keep flow velocities down. Stokke
said erosion potential increases exponentially with velocity.

“Each time you double the velocity, the erosion potential will increase roughly 6 times as much,”
Stokke said. “When you get to 30, 40, 50 m/s—which is not that uncommon—then it can have a
huge problem. Even small amounts of sand can slowly eat away the pipe walls in bends.”

INTECSEA: Erosion Control Technology

While there are several steps operators can take to mitigate the effects of sand production,
operators still cannot do much to effectively control sand erosion in real time. One company,
INTECSEA, has developed Erosion Control Technology (ECT) to potentially make that task
easier.
 INTECSEA’s Erosion Control Technology
is designed to reduce concentrated erosion
by redistributing sand particles in flow.
Source: INTECSEA.

ECT is a set of inserts placed inside a pipeline or flowline that can move inward and outward
using actuators for active sand erosion control. The company designed the technology to work in
any flow path experiencing sand erosion issues due to detrimental flow effects such as high flow
velocities or localized flow effects (recirculation and swirl). While the company describes ECT
as a generic solution for the industry, the inserts are adaptable and can be retrofit.

Fig. 1 illustrates how an ECT insert placed upstream, or just downstream, of the junction can
redistribute sand that is either traveling at a high velocity due to strong swirl, or sand that has
gathered at the bottom of a stratified flow, thus reducing concentrated erosion. The technology
can be either active or passive. An active design includes an actuated unit with a set of custom-
engineered inserts which can be placed inside the pipeline or flowline.

INTECSEA announced it had successfully completed the first stage “proof of concept” phase of
physical laboratory testing for ECT. The tests were primarily intended to prove the calibration
with computational flow dynamic models and that the levels of reduction in erosion rate in the
lab samples were due to ECT implementation.

The company plans to perform further testing on process conditions to meet industry-standard
Technology Readiness Levels with the hopes of eventually implementing the technology in the
oil and gas sector. In a press release, the company expressed a desire to find “interested parties
and stakeholders” to help it progress toward those ends.
Three Key Principles to Solving Operation Flow Issues

Over the course of an offshore project’s operation, flow-related issues are likely to manifest. The
levels of difficulty and consequence may vary, but for a variety of reasons their underlying cause
is not immediately obvious. In such circumstances, an investigation of fluid flow behavior based
on an understanding of the first principles of flow assurance is necessary, an expert said.

In a presentation held by the SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section, Trevor Hill spoke about the
principles and practices that arose from lessons learned in BP’s flow assurance operations. Hill is
a senior flow assurance advisor at BP.

Hill described three principles that should guide any analysis of a flow assurance incident. First,
the laws of physics always apply: In many cases, the key to determining the cause of a problem
is recognizing which law of physics is most applicable to the circumstances. Second, common
sense about flow assurance usually provides the key to understanding: Flow assurance experts
should have a basic idea of what happens in a flowing system.

The third principle is that, despite one’s knowledge of flow assurance and general physics,
unusual events beyond a person’s understanding can still occur within a system. Hill said a
consultant should be prepared for anything.

“Sometimes we just have to acknowledge that something strange has happened. We’ve
understood the physics, we’ve understood the data, but we still can’t understand the issue until
we’ve taken into account some other phenomenon,” he said.

When tackling a flow assurance incident on-site, Hill said consultants should first gather the
opinions of the operations team members, since they have a day-to-day understanding of what
should happen under normal circumstances and better familiarity with the available data. He said
the key to talking with operators is to avoid a confrontational or accusatory tone of discussion, so
as to gain their trust and create an environment where frank discussion can take place more
freely.

“It’s not about confrontation or finding out who’s done something wrong,” Hill said. It’s about
this being our issue together, and we want to help find it. You have to keep an environment
where you can go back—here’s initially what was said, but now we’ve got a list of follow-up
questions—and we need to keep that communication open.”

After getting the operator’s view, the consultant must develop his or her own understanding of
the system in question. This involves learning the topography of the field; the schematic layout
of the facilities, pipelines, flowlines, and risers; and the sources of flow, pressure, and
temperature. Hill said a best-case scenario is for an operator to have an as-built transient model
of the system available for analysis. From there, the consultant should obtain all process data and
logs for the incident, check them against the process data for normal conditions, and develop a
timeline.
Hill said a formal timeline of the incident is crucial because it can help consultants and operators
better understand what exactly transpired.

“In the heat of the moment, with people thinking back to what they think happened, things can
actually get out of order and, as that timeline gets written out, actually things may not connect
properly,” Hill said.

Developing a theory for the cause of an incident requires rigorous testing and constant revision
of the theory. Hill said it is important to be careful in this step of the evaluation; consultants
should ascertain the operator’s confidence in the instrumentation on-site and check for
abnormalities in the ambient conditions around a field.

Fig. 1—A
schematic diagram of a flowline running from a set of manifolds (M1, M2, M3) for an unnamed BP
project. A seawater ingress caused a hydrate buildup in the flowline, which lead to a significant
increase in backpressure during a system restart.

He discussed several examples of flow assurance incidents that BP encountered in its operations.
One such incident involved the buildup of hydrates in a deepwater flowline, represented in Fig. 1
as a bold yellow line running from a set of manifolds (M1, M2, M3), during a system restart.
During the restart, the riser-based pressure gauge showed a value significantly higher than
normal—160 bar, 20 bar higher than the normal restart pressure.

The extra pressure suggested a hydrate buildup in the flowline, but because the field was an early
life field with no water cut, Hill said that hypothesis was difficult to accept initially.
“That’s when we get into the laws of physics,” he said. “You can’t form hydrates without water,
so there’s an operational response to the awareness of hydrates as an issue, but we couldn’t come
and say fundamentally we don’t think it could be that. So what really did happen in this case?”

When the system was shut down, the differential pressure across the riser started at
approximately 7 bar, and the differential pressure across the flowline was approximately 4 bar.
As the liquids settled out, the temperature in the flowline dropped, causing the gas to contract
and suck some of the liquid that was in the riser back into the flowline. This caused a drop in the
riser differential pressure to approximately 4.5 bar.

After a day-and-a-half, the differential pressures across the riser and the flowline unexpectedly
started to rise again. This was due to a small, but noticeable, seawater ingress upstream of the
riser top valve. Fluid had entered the system, gotten into the flowline, and filled it, leading to the
increased backpressure.

Hill said the incident was an example of how a tiny malfunction could cause a major problem.

“We had a higher differential pressure than we’d ever seen on this one little component that was
one failure out of a multitude of components,” he said.

This webinar is available at https://webevents.spe.org/products/operational-flow-assurance.

Flow Assurance – Hydrate and Paraffin Management

As operators move into more remote regions, deeper offshore depths, and into regions that yield
more challenging reservoir fluids, they face difficulty in keeping the produced fluids and gas
flowing through the lines. The field of flow assurance, the coupling of multiphase flow and
production chemistry, was born out of necessity as it has grown in concern to all operators.

To effectively manage flow assurance, oil and gas operators must take a holistic approach,
particularly when working in deepwater offshore environments, Abul Jamaluddin, NExT
business manager for North America and a flow assurance adviser to Schlumberger said.
Speaking during a recent SPE training course webinar on flow assurance, he said that the best
approach was one which considered all aspects of the problem.

Flow assurance is essential to the economics of any project and the overall goal is to maintain
flow from wellbore to processing. “Flow assurance is a problem that has always been around in
our industry,” he said. But the problem has grown more complex as operators move into more
challenging environments. In shallow water or onshore, operators often got a lot of solids
deposits in the production system, but gaining access to the wellbore and the flowlines was
easier. In deep water, operators have to contend with colder temperatures, higher pressures, and
longer tiebacks. Deepwater wellbores are more expensive to access and present more complexity
in mitigating blockage of flowlines. “(In deep water) you have basically one chance to drill the
producing well and the ability to understand the reservoir fluid characteristics because these
wells are very expensive,” Jamaluddin said.

Flow assurance depends on a variety of factors, including reservoir fluid properties, fluid flow,
asphaltene, wax, hydrates, naphthenates, scales, heavy oils, emulsions, foams, sand, and heavy
oils. “Understanding the fundamentals of these elements is the key to designing a management
strategy,” he said. To address these concerns, operators must work in three domains when
maintaining flow assurance: production chemistry, production engineering, and production
surveillance.

Jamaluddin urges operators to start with formation testing technologies to determine the nature of
the reservoir’s fluids. “We want to know what kind of fluid we are dealing with in terms of API,
gas/oil ratio, and compositions,” he said. Representative samples are taken from the reservoir for
a series of laboratory tests, including pressure, volume, temperature, asphaltenes, waxes, and
hydrates—measurements that lead to effective modeling of the reservoir.

Operators need a system in place for monitoring field production to ensure that the production
conforms to the model’s predictions. Finally, a feedback loop using sensors and multiphase flow
meters enables an operator to make changes to the system if the production parameters deviate
too far from an initial design.

When planning for flow assurance, operators must bear in mind that reservoirs are not generally
homogeneous. “In the past, we used to think of a reservoir as a tank of diesel, with compositions
the same throughout,” Jamaluddin said. But many reservoirs have varying compositions, with
lighter fluids at the top and heavier fluids at greater depths. “We usually have a mixed fluid with
light ends and heavy ends,” he said. The mixture of the two can pose additional challenges, such
as the precipitation of the asphaltenes commonly found in heavy fluids. Asphaltenes can
precipitate due to changes in oil composition, temperature, or pressure depletion.

Common inorganic scales, such as calcite and barite, also present challenges. Calcites are
frequently formed when produced waters from high-bicarbonate and high-calcium zones of the
reservoir are commingled.

Barite generally forms when there is a mixture of production and injection water. The barium
concentrations in produced water are roughly inversely proportional to the concentration of
sulfates, indicating that the barium is in equilibrium with barite in the formation. If saline water
is injected into the reservoir and mixes with the formation water, the concentration of sulfate in
the production water may cause the super-saturation of barite.

Hydrates form in combinations of high pressure, low temperatures, and low-molecular-weight

gases (methane, ethane, propane, or butane). Water molecules arrange themselves into 5- or 6-
membered rings, which form three-dimensional polyhedra around the gases. One volume of
hydrate can carry from 160 to 180 volumes of methane, which presents unique risks to deepwater
offshore operators, such as the abrupt expansion of the methane gas during the breakup of
hydrates, Jamaluddin said.
Hydrates Management
Amadeu Sum, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Hydrate Research at the
Colorado School of Mines, said that temperatures do not have to be below freezing for hydrates
to occur. Seafloor temperatures in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) are close to 4°C
year round.

Hydrates can form onshore or offshore in a relatively short period of time, plug up lines quickly,
and disrupt production. Within flowlines, hydrates can form along the walls or can flow through
the production, forming a solid slurry, he said.

A common approach to prevent hydrates from forming in flowlines is to inject thermodynamic

inhibitors—such as methanol, monoethylene glycol (MEG), or ethanol—at the wellbore. “Using
this approach, it is therefore important to have a good understanding when hydrates can form, in
terms of temperature and pressure, in a flowline,” Sum said.

A tool used to determine the correct amount of a hydrate inhibitor is the Colorado School of
Mines Gibbs Energy Minimization (CSMGem). It allows a user to enter specific data on a
hydrocarbon mixture and obtain a pressure/temperature equilibrium boundary with and without a
thermodynamic inhibitor. Methanol has often been shown to be the most effective on a per
weight and cost basis, while MEG is more commonly used for gas systems. Ethanol is a
predominant inhibitor in Brazil, he said.

Instead of trying to eliminate hydrates entirely, which incurs additional operating expenses for
chemicals, operators are considering alternative approaches. One of these is to allow hydrates to
form, while working to prevent their agglomeration. The strategy allows operators to tolerate
some hydrates in flowlines without blocking the lines, and to reduce the cost and quantity of
chemicals used, Sum said.

Although less expensive, there is additional risk to this approach: Once hydrates start to form,
they can quickly plug up lines and force operations to a halt. The key to hydrate management is
to inject anti-agglomerants, which keep hydrates dispersed in the fluid phases, and thus, prevent
them from forming larger agglomerates that can plug the line, he said. For this approach to be
successful, one needs to have a good understanding of how hydrates are forming, agglomerating,
depositing, and jamming.

The Center for Hydrate Research has noticed trends in hydrate formation. Before the hydrates
are formed, the turbulence of the flow emulsifies water in oil and entrains gas bubbles in the
liquid. When the temperatures are low enough and pressures are high enough, hydrates will most
likely form at the interface between the water and the hydrocarbon fluid, whether oil or gas,
forming a hydrate shell around water or oil droplets that are in the emulsion. Hydrates can also
form along the pipe walls, which are continuously wet and exposed to the gas.
The amount of water, gas, or temperature variations can affect the growth rate of hydrates. The
initial hydrate shell probably forms very quickly. From there, mass or heat transfer affects the
growth rates of the hydrate crystals. Once a sufficient amount of hydrates are in the system, a
slurry will change the flow behavior as hydrates are either suspended in the oil/water fluid or
deposited on the walls of the pipe. The hydrate particulates may attempt to agglomerate into
larger aggregates or continue to grow in larger deposits on the pipe wall, depending on the flow
conditions of the continuous fluid. If the hydrates are dispersed in a continuous water phase, the
hydrates will remain dispersed. If, however, the particles are dispersed in an oil-continuous
phase, they will likely build into larger aggregates.

The Colorado School of Mines has developed two tools, CSMHyK (Colorado School of Mines
Hydrate Kinetics) and CSMHyFAST (Colorado School of Mines Hydrate Flow Assurance
Simulation Tool), to model the formation of hydrates and the resultant plugging in production
systems.

Mitigation of Paraffins: A Case Study

Nathan Goodman, operations drilling engineer at Anadarko, said deposition of paraffin and
consequent plugging are among the most most pressing issues in deepwater GOM, after
hydrates.

One well under study was located in the Power Play prospect, discovered in 2006, at a depth of
2,315 ft. Production started about 2 years later, through two 6.2-mile pipe-in-pipe flowlines with
insulated steel catenary risers and an electrohydraulic control umbilical. The pipe-in-pipe design
was chosen to minimize heat loss to the sea. The single well had the capability to flow through
either or both flowlines, which were looped so that the operator could run a pig through them
(Fig. 1). In addition, the well was equipped with umbilical tubes which allowed for methanol
injection at the wellhead, downhole injection of a paraffin inhibitor, and a low dosage hydrate
inhibitor, Goodman said.

Fig. 1—Subsea layout of pipe-in-

pipe flowlines.
About 18 months after production started, the operator split the flow through the northern and
southern flowlines to decrease the pressure drop and increase production. Initially, both lines
operated at similar temperatures and pressures, but about 1 year later, the operator noticed some
differences between the two. The temperature of the northern flowline was about 60°F, below the
wax appearance temperature (WAT) of the crude, which was 106°F. Meanwhile, bottomhole
pressure was building, and the total production from the two flowlines had declined by 1,000
B/D . The operator concluded that the northern flowline was partially plugged with paraffin,
Goodman said.

To mitigate the paraffin deposits in the northern flowline and riser, the operator shut in
production and used circulation pumps and a hot oil tank to circulate from 370 to 390 B/D of oil
heated to about 150°F through the looped lines. Unfortunately, oil circulation flow rates were
low due to equipment concerns and because the plug was so far from the surface facility. The hot
oil treatment did not unblock the line. The operator halted the paraffin mitigation efforts because
it was simultaneously drilling in nearby areas and had limited space available for equipment and
personnel on the host platform.

A crew later returned to inject xylene into the northern flowline, and to remove it from the
southern flowline. Production from the field was again shut in for about 2 weeks while this
technique was applied. The goal was to dissolve the paraffin until a xylene injection rate of about
1.5 bbl/min was achieved, followed by pumping of heated water (180°F) through the loop
system for additional cleaning, and flushing of the line with a pig.

The partially plugged line did not respond as expected to the xylene injection. Pressure built up
in the northern line as injection started, indicating the line was completely blocked. The operator
then tried to inject xylene into the southern flowline and to take returns from the northern
flowline. But pressure quickly built up in the southern line, indicating the block in the northern
line was not moving. Xylene injection failed to clear the line. The northern line remained
blocked, but the operator learned the obstruction was about 15,000 ft from the wellhead,
Goodman said.

Production from the well was routed through the southern flowline at a reduced rate. Because of
the block in the northern line, the operator monitored the temperature and pressure of the fluid
arriving from the southern line (installing a third line was not economical).

Within a few months, the fluid temperatures fell below the WAT, pressure was building at the
wellhead, and flow from the reservoir was reduced—indicating that the southern line was
beginning to plug.

The operator flowed the production from an upper zone (Zone A), which had been shut in. The
production rate from Zone A was 4,200 B/D compared with the lower Zone B production rate of
1,200 B/D of total liquids.

Zone A was unproduced and, therefore, had a higher reservoir pressure, which resulted in an
increased flowing temperature downstream of the choke, in excess of 180°F (Fig. 2). The
temperature of the flow at the surface increased from 80°F to 133°F, exceeding the WAT (106°F).
 Fig. 2—With the
increase in flow rate through the southern flowline,
a reduction in downstream flowing pressure was observed.

SPE Technical Section Addresses Flow Assurance

In response to the growing importance of flow assurance, SPE launched the the Flow Assurance
Technical Section (connect.spe.org/fts/) in January. Chaired by Jeff Creek, Chevron ETC, the
group is concerned with topics related to providing flow assurance between the reservoir and the
processing plant.

Section officers include Phaneendra Kondapi, FMC Technologies; Steve Cochran, Chevron ETC;
Hari Subramanian, Chevron ETC; John Nighswanter, Schlumberger; Dendy Sloan, Colorado
School of Mines; Greg Hatton, Shell; Cem Sarica, University of Tulsa; and Scott Bufton,
Intecsea.

Sarica, F.H. “Mick” Merelli/Cimarex Energy professor of petroleum engineering at the

University of Tulsa, said that flow assurance is a broad field—a bridge between the reservoir and
downstream business, particularly for offshore fields.

He noted that in general, the industry is doing a good job of developing deepwater resources and
bringing hydrocarbons to the market. “It will all come from advances in technologies. Better
technologies will open up new opportunities for us,” he said.
In developing the technical section, the group identified the need to facilitate interaction between
industrial and academic practitioners. “We wanted to bring every stakeholder to the table and
work together to enhance our understanding,” Sarica said.

The technical section provides a platform for sharing experiences of common problems to
develop approaches to mitigate the problems. “We want to bring our heads together to see what
we can do, what works, what doesn’t, and decide what technologies and best practices to
pursue,” he said.

The group stressed that increased production and improved cost structures are the goals of
effective flow assurance practices. For example, direct electrical heating of flowlines on the
seafloor to prevent hydrate blockages and wax deposition is a technology that appears to be up
and coming.

Heuristics related to solids deposition are being shared in efforts to develop best practices. For
example, to determine where hydrates will be deposited, it is important to identify where free
water occurs in a flowline and to minimize its volume early after the well. Development using
subsea facilities offers a potential solution by decreasing the distance from the well to the
processing facility.

The understanding of multiphase flow is considered to be prerequisite science for flow assurance
problems because of the influences of local pressure, temperature, and fluid distributions. Sarica
said multiphase flow prediction tools are generally developed using detailed data obtained from
small-scale laboratory experimental facilities operated under low-pressure conditions (slightly
above atmospheric pressures) and with limited high-pressure data. This can result in significant
errors in prediction of multiphase flow. Therefore, the integration of higher pressures and larger
pipe sizes into multiphase flow models is identified as an area for further improvement in flow
assurance. OGF

For Further Reading

SPE 166196 A Tale of Two Flowlines—Paraffin Plugging and Remediation by N.T. Goodman,
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and N. Joshi, Moulinex Business Services.

OTC 24396 Prevention, Management, and Remediation Approaches for Gas Hydrates in the
Flow Assurance of Oil/Gas Flowlines by A.K. Sum, Colorado School of Mines.

SPE 163076 Experimental Study of Wax-Deposition Characteristics of a Waxy Crudy Oil under
Single-Phase Turbulent-Flow Conditions by P. Dwivedi, C. Sarica, and W. Shang, University of
Tulsa.

SPE 166335 Offshore Field Application of a Low Corrosive Fluid Designed for De-Scaling of
Well with ESP Completion by H.B. Bakar, I.C. XianLung, M.Z. B. M. Nadzri et. al. Setegap
Ventures Petroleum