Welcome to the peer-reviewed papers section of Oil and Gas Facilities. Before I introduce the papers for this issue, I would like to emphasize the importance of discussions of SPE papers. As you read a peer-reviewed paper, there may be elements that some of you disagree with or at least feel require further clarification or commentary. Please do not hesitate to forward these ideas and concerns to me—a discussion section is something that I would like to see become a reality during my second year as Executive Editor.
As usual, there are four papers in this section. The first deals with thermodynamic performance indicators for offshore platforms. The authors of this paper evaluated several thermodynamic performance indicators presented in the literature according to three criteria—the use of technically achievable potential, the use of theoretical potential, and the total use of energy resources. The performance indicators were then tested on four North Sea facilities, and the results are discussed at the end of the paper.
The second paper presents a new simplified dynamic model for severe-slugging flow in pipeline/riser systems. The proposed model, together with five other simplified models found in the literature, were compared with results from the OLGA simulator. The new model was found to compare well with experiments and OLGA simulations; yet, this model has a limited number of state variables so that it can be used for model-based control design, which is clearly an advantage.
The third paper deals with subsea processing, which is increasingly used to boost production and reduce cost. Accordingly, the subsea power demand is growing to support various processing loads, which calls for a reliable subsea electrical-power system that is suitable for the hostile and remote operating environment. The paper presents a modular, direct-current, electrical-power system that is designed for use in a subsea field with medium or long step-out distance, the performance of which was verified by a scale model.
After three offshore-related papers, the fourth paper has application both onshore and offshore and comes to us from Oman. Polymer-enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) operation has been implemented for the production of oil from difficult mature oil fields in Oman. The polymer used to sweep oil toward production wells in this EOR technique is resulting in the generation of polymer-flood produced water (PFPW) of increasing viscosity. A pilot plant developed during the earlier study was used to conduct coagulation/flocculation-, flotation-, filtration-, and adsorption-treatment trials for the PFPW from an oil field where polymer EOR was under way. The paper describes the findings and concluded that the plant did remove most of the polymer, along with oil and suspended solids.
I hope that you will review these interesting papers, and as mentioned earlier, SPE would welcome further discussion whenever you feel that the content of a particular paper warrants further debate. I also urge you to submit papers for peer review; we welcome your contributions.
Associate Editors
Williams Chirinos, Inexertus
Galen Dino, Consultant
Sudhakar Mahajanam, ConocoPhillips
