Flow assurance
Flow measurement touches almost every phase of oil and gas operations. Yet the industry still struggles to distinguish between what is directly measured, what is inferred, and what is estimated through models, correlations, or assumptions. That distinction matters. A measurement does not need to be perfect to be useful, but it must be fit for purpose.
This paper presents an engineering solution tailored for shallow-water oilfield development in Bohai Bay, addressing the confluence of spatial constraints, marginal economics, and environmental conditions that have rendered such reserves stranded.
This paper details the design and implementation of a subsea multiphase pump solution deployed in the Atlanta field designed to maximize reuse of existing subsea and topside equipment.
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Construction costs, contractor involvement, flow assurance, and the integration of new technologies created to improve production are some of the deepwater challenges exacerbated by the current low price environment. -
Use of surfactants and gas lift in combination to suppress severe slugging were tested. Surfactants were able to suppress severe slugging for most of the cases, and gas lift helped significantly.
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The Tamar deepwater gas development offshore Israel experienced a short 4-year gap between discovery and startup, but doing so required the tough decisions in handling significant flow assurance issues.
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Flow assurance issues offshore fall into three main categories -- production chemistry (deposition), operational issues (sand, slugging, foaming, emulsions) and integrity (corrosion, erosion)
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When energy and healthcare collaborate, innovation is born. Pumps and Pipes, an unprecedented cross-industry collaboration between oil and gas exploration and production (E&P), cardiovascular medicine, aerospace, and academia, has grown into an international forum for transferable ideas and technolo
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For many projects, asphaltene management plans are a matter of remediation or prevention. In the past decade, models have been developed to predict how asphaltene particles will behave in oil—the conditions under which precipitation and agglomeration occur.
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Rice University has been working on effective models of phase behavior and asphaltene deposition as a path to improved design that can reduce this challenge for operators.
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Riser slugging can restrict production and cause problems for downstream equipment. This paper discusses a simplified modeling approach to control of riser slugging.
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Severe slugging is characterized by large pressure fluctuations at the base of the riser and is accompanied by fluctuations in fluid delivery from the top of the riser. This instability has negative effects on downstream equipment.
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Flow assurance is a burgeoning field that offers many opportunities to young engineers—provided they are willing to develop expertise in a range of technical disciplines to obtain additional nontechnical skills.
