Methodology for Concept Selection of Subsea Processing Plants

LEANDRO AUGUSTO GRANDIN PEREIRA¹; Celso Kazuyuki Morooka¹

¹ UNICAMP

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0071

Resumo

The developments of offshore oil and natural gas fields have been moving to deeper waters, harsher environments and more remote areas. The use of conventional solutions to develop such fields, especially sole use of surface processing or downhole artificial lift methods, may not justify the investments. Subsea processing has been increasing the attractiveness or even enabling offshore field developments. Given the increase in its use, the authors proposed a methodology to select concepts of subsea processing plants for oil and natural gas fields, using information available in the literature as well as support from specialists in subsea technology and in asset integrated simulation. Higher drawdown in producer wells is a potential consequence of the use of subsea processing, therefore it may modify the production profile. Consequently, an integrated approach was considered to propose a methodology, taking into consideration the various aspects of field development. In order to overcome the lack of quantitative information regarding concept selection in field developments and impact on produciton profiles and other parameters, case studies were performed, using information available in public domain, to seek methodology validation. The results suggest that the methodology is valid, although it is not clear if such cases would utilize all phases proposed.

Palavras-chave: subsea; processing; offshore; field; development