TRAINING SUBSEA AND DOWNHOLE PROCESSING

DESCRIPTION

As easily accessible petroleum basins have matured, exploration and development have expanded farther offshore and to remote areas. New development challenges are in deep water and in marginal fields with smaller reserves. The facilities required in these new developments are similar in function to conventional processing facilities, but the packaging requirements can be quite different. Process facilities can now be placed literally anywhere between the reservoir and the product pipeline, including subsea and downhole. Obviously, minimizing surface equipment size and weight reduces costs for deepwater platforms. In addition, the trend of tying smaller fields to a larger processing facility, in a hub-and-spoke arrangement, has led to novel production approaches. Oil/water or liquid/gas can be partially separated closer to the reservoir to reduce the size of surface equipment, eliminate or reduce the size of flowlines, or to facilitate pumping. Remote pumps or compressors can either reinject unwanted fluids or transport produced fluids to a distant central processing facility. Subsea and downhole equipment can accomplish these tasks when surface facilities would be prohibitively expensive. What subsea and downhole processing have in common is that each is a means of processing produced fluids remotely to reduce facility development costs, in more harsh and confined environments than is typical of surface equipment

OUTLINE COURSE

• Overview
• Subsea Processing
  • Improved Reservoir Productivity
  • Deepwater and Long-Distance Tiebacks
  • Flow Assurance
  • Topside Facilities Limitations
  • Unmanned and Minimum Facilities Developments
• Background:
  • Conventional Technologies
  • Driven by Economics
• Process Configurations:
  • Gas/Liquid Separation and Liquid Pumping
  • Water Separation and Disposal
  • Three-Phase Separation
• Design Considerations
  • Reservoir Characterization
  • Water Depth and Tieback Distance
  • Separation Philosophy
  • Capacity of Topside Facilities
  • Operating Range and Turndown Requirement
  • Instrumentation and Monitoring
  • Well-Test Requirement
• Technology Components
  • Process Technology
  • Subsea Technology
  • Separation Technology
  • Pump Selection
  • Subsea Power Distribution
  • Control System
  • Instrumentation
  • Gas Handling
• Downhole Processing
  • Technology Fundamentals:
    • Gas/Liquid Separation and Injection
    • Oil/Water Separation and Injection
  • Screening Criteria: Rules of Thumb
    • Gas/Liquid
    • Oil/Water
  • Engineering and Design Issues
    • Tubing/Casing Sizes, Length, and Diameter Constraints
    • Hydraulics/Nodal Analysis
    • Flow Modeling Through Separator/Pump/Compressor
    • Reservoir Injection Modeling
    • Instrumentation, Monitoring, and Control
    • Solids Production
    • Metallurgy/Materials
    • Surface Chemistry and Emulsions
    • Separation Calculations
    • Range of Operating Conditions/Turndown/Change in Productivity and Injectivity Over Time
  • Geological Considerations for Downhole Injection
  • Operational Considerations
  • Environmental Considerations
  • Economic Considerations

RECOMMENDED AUDIENCE

• Subsea & Facilities Engineers
• Production & Operations Engineers
• Reservoir & Petroleum Engineers
• Deepwater Field Development Planners & Asset Managers
• Project & EPCI Contractors