8
SUBPRO Subsea Production and Processing
PhD candidate,
Diana Gonzalez
Co-Supervisor, Prof.
Sigbjørn Sangesland
Co-Supervisor, Prof.
Emeritus Michael Golan
Subsea gate box
Different wells in a subsea
oil
field have different production capacities, diffe
production constraints and different production targets dictated by rese
management. Therefore, they are subject to individual management and con
However, the cluster nature of the field,
commingling the production streams of the
individual
wells,
creates
a
strong
interdependence of the flow rates and
production pressures of the individual wells.
Thus, as the wells are producing in a network, a
change in operating conditions of one well,
affects all other wells in the cluster and
consequently the total network outcome. The
results of this interdependency is that the
production rate of the integrated system is,
most often, considerably sub-optimal.
This project explores new facilities and system
configurations, as well as novel strategies to
achieve efficient and optimal management of the integrated system. This include
optimization over the entire life of the field, accounting for the considerable cha
in production conditions associated with the reservoir recovery process.
In short, the challenge in the project is to optimise the recovery and revenue fro
asset by managing the interdependencies between the wells.
The project will identify and evaluate the feasibility and the implication of variou
subsea systems architecture alternatives. A central element of the project is the
development of a modular and multi-functional assembly to allow easy re-routin
well streams and a quick and easy deployment of separation and compression
capabilities to a single well, to a group of wells or to the entire cluster. The assem
named Subsea gate box will be configured to account for all the default demands
modern subsea process equipment, including; compactness, robustness, ease of
deployment and integration in the entire system and ease of operation.
The Subsea gate box is configurable as a template that can accommodate individ
well modules and compartments, containing process equipment (
Figure 3
). The
process equipment may include separators, pumps, compressors, control valves
or flow meters, according to the characteristics of the well stream. A task in the e
phase of the project (
Figure 4
) will be to identify the leading technology in the
market that suits best to a compact and modular solution. The project deliverabl
will include a description of the state-of-the-art subsea process technology,
Figure 3. Subsea Gate Box concept sk
Co-supervisor,
Professor Emeritus
Michael Golan
Co-supervisor,
Assoc. Professor
Milan Stanko
Postdoc,
Mariana Diaz
Project manager
and main
supervisor,
Prof. Sigbjørn
Sangesland
Figure 5. Field development concepts activities
Field development concepts
Identify ideal field
architecture
Economic
Analysis
Production
Profile
Reservoir
Simulations
Production
System
Simulations
Costs
Analysis
Analyse Flow
assurance issues
Operational
Challenges and
Technological
Bottleneck (Current
Technologies)
Explore and
Analyse
potential
Enablers (New
Technologies)
Figure
.
Field development conc pts activ ties
Over the last years, the world energy demand has
increased exponentially, bringing the necessity
of developing hydrocarbon production systems in
remote areas e.g. remote arctic fields, deep and
ultra-deep water offshore fields and low energy
reservoirs. However, the development and oper-
ation of such type of fields is challenging due to
the safety and environmental risks, weather sea-
son limitations, complex logistics, low sea tempe-
ratures, requirements for energy consumption,
high investments costs etc. The main objective of
this project is to determine, analyse and rank cost
effective strategies to develop remote offshore oil
reservoirs with low energy. A secondary objective
is to analyse cost effective solutions for long trans-
port distances taking into account flow assurance.
A thorough literature review will be performed
including consultations with th industrial part-
ners to determine which field architecture con-
cepts should be analysed and considered for low
energy remote offshore fields. There will be a
strong focus in new tec nologies and tendencies
in subsea processing and boosting. Some exam-
ples are:
• Production t floater and transportation to
shore (traditional)
• Subsea separation and transportation to shore
(reinjection of gas and water)
• Multiphase boosti g and transport tio t
shore
• Subsea to beach
Field development concepts
Project manager and main
PhD supervisor, Associate
Prof. Milan Stanko
The research will be divided into two main
activities
(Figure 5)
, the first consists of identify-
ing one or several ideal field architectures for the
development of a remote oil reservoir with low
energy. The second activity consists of analysing
and evaluating flow assurance issues in these
ideal field architectures.
The first activity will be carried out evaluating
two main aspects for each field architecture con-
cept; he ec nomi s, taking into account api-
tal expenditures (drilling costs, equipment cost,
installation costs etc.) and operating expenditures
(maintenance, intervention, flow assurance meas-
ures etc.) and an operational evaluation, where
the production profile of each field architecture
will be computed and evaluated. The input and
advice for the calculations and simulations from
the industrial partners will be taken into account
to keep the analysis as realistic as possible. The
project will develop Integrated asset models (dig-
ital field) for the selected concepts and will use
realistic models with built in commercial software
if possible. This allows running simulations until
end of asset life.
For the econd activity, flow assurance issues will
be addressed. Here, the operational challenges
and technological bottlenecks of the current
technologies will be analysed and new enabling
technologies will be explored and analysed.