Developing non-Chemical Flow Assurance Strategies for Petroleum Production Systems

• Main Author: EDDIE MAZWAN BIN OTHMAN, EDDIE MAZWAN BIN OTHMAN
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2012
• Subjects: TN Mining engineering. Metallurgy
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/5846/1/Final%20Report%2011915.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/5846/

The challenge for flow assurance always arise in deepwater field development, thermal insulation system become concern in order to prepare for the worst due to tendency of hydrate and paraffin crystal formation which leads to blockage risk. Wax formation, hydrate formation, paraffin formation, aspalthenes formation, scale formation and others is common issues in oil and gas industries. Haunted with these challenges while balancing opex, capex and risk of uncertainty, non-chemical flow assurance risks management strategies can be the right solution instead of using conventional chemical solution. Specific field favors passive techniques to retain heat such as wet insulation, dry insulation, flowline burial, flexible pipe and combined method. There are also field that not compatible with this techniques which require active heating system like coiled tubing, electric heating and hot fluid circulation. By using this two techniques which is non-chemical, it is a step forward reducing and even eliminating the use of chemical inhibitors injection which require topside facilities preparation where not all having enough space and even costly. Besides, it also can reduce safety issues when dealing with the chemical inhibitors. This project will focus on the available passive type of non-chemical flow assurance by using of thermal insulation concept. Evaluation about the appropriate methods trough out research from some research papers will be included to highlight the efficiency of the method mentioned. A hypothetical data collected from trusted sources will be analyzed using production optimization software tool, PROSPER and the end result will be used to construct a work flow for the petroleum production system. The significance of this analysis should be able to contribute to petroleum technologist and even top management to see the important of thermal insulation towards having best flow assurance strategies. On top of that, the industry will aware of its reliability and feasibility while designing the flowlines and pipeline within the cost constrain.