Theme #2 Flow Assurance & Subsea Processing for Reliable Deepwater Production
Smaller FLNG facilities and/or deeper water production require more processing be done subsea and reduced inventories of chemical hydrate inhibitors.
NMR Online Analysis of Discharge Water
Subsea processing of hydrocarbon production is gaining increasing traction. A focus is the separation of produced water and its subsea discharge, particularly with the advent of both FLNG, where surface separation presents a very expensive footprint, and deep-water production, where early water removal reduces flow assurance risks. On-line monitoring of the discharge water’s oil contamination…
More InfoReducing MEG Use Through Under-Inhibited Operations
Gas hydrates are ice-like solids that form and block subsea gas pipelines, and represent the most significant flow assurance risk to operations. Current subsea operations use thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (THI) to prevent the formation of gas hydrates in pipelines and subsea equipment. The operating cost of this prevention strategy increases geometrically with wellhead depth, and…
More InfoProbabilistic Hydrate Formation Risk
Gas hydrate management, rather than avoidance, could be a viable strategy if a precise description of when and where the solids are likely to form was available. Conventional approaches for estimating the risk of plug formation are based simplistically on a single sub-cooling threshold of 3.6 K below the hydrate equilibrium boundary. This heuristic is…
More InfoBio-compatible Anti-Agglomerants
In deep water another management strategy involves allowing gas hydrates to form and co-injecting so-called anti-agglomerant (AA) chemicals to prevent hydrate particles from aggregating or depositing on the pipeline wall. However, the toxicity standards placed on these AA chemicals, which are largely based on ionic surfactants, is an obstacle to their wider use. Recently, examples…
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