Welcome to the peer-reviewed papers section of Oil and Gas Facilities. Before I introduce the four papers selected for this issue, I would like to address a different matter first. If you have read these introductions before, you will have noted that most of them include an invitation to submit papers for peer review. In most cases, these invitations are toward the end of the introduction and, therefore, may be considered only token gestures.
Nothing could be farther from the truth—SPE would like to publish more peer-reviewed papers in all of its journals, and as the executive editor of this journal, I will do whatever I can to make it happen for Oil and Gas Facilities. In this issue, I begin with an appeal to submit papers on projects, systems, and technologies related to upstream oil and gas facilities. At the bottom of this page, you will find details on how to submit a manuscript to SPE, and I hope that you will respond.
The four papers included in this issue cover a wide range of subjects. The first paper focuses on the applicability of subsea processing technology with the use of multiphase pumps to develop marginal deepwater fields. While the paper does not present specific field applications, the authors include several typical cases that show the logical path through which multiphase pumps were recommended for marginal deepwater field developments.
The second paper covers a methodology to evaluate the required amount of passive fire protection (PFP), and shows that this methodology increases certainty about the level of protection provided to a structure. While this approach increases the cost of the upfront analysis, the resulting PFP scheme is likely to yield major savings in both capital and operating expenditures.
The third paper deals with a method to simulate gas pipeline networks. While this paper contains plenty of theory, it also contains practical case studies to demonstrate the straightforward and reliable nature of the proposed methodology when it is used to analyze a steady-state gas network system with pipeline, compressor, and wellhead components.
The last paper in this issue presents novel technologies to increase the energy efficiency of offshore oil and gas platforms and concludes that the most effective way to achieve this is by applying compact bottoming cycles to the waste heat from the platform’s gas turbines.
I hope that you will review these papers and find them as interesting as I did when selecting them. As always, while these papers are peer-reviewed, SPE welcomes further discussion, and I would invite you to submit a discussion whenever you feel that the content of a particular paper warrants further debate.
Gerald Verbeek, Peer-Review Editor,
Verbeek Management Services
Associate Editors
Williams Chirinos, Inexertus
Galen Dino, AMEC Oil and Gas Americas
Sudhakar Mahajanam, ConocoPhillips
