Hibernia Q Block - Waterflooding to Increase Field Liquid Recovery with the Presence of a Gas Cap

Abstract

Abstract The problem cased by wax deposition during production and transportation of waxy oil has been receiving an increasing attention from the industry, especially with the off-shore projects expansion recently. Due to the high cost of those projects, an accurate modelling on wax precipitation and deposition is imperatively required to facilitate the design, development, and operation of those projects. While the wax precipitation models depict the thermodynamic behaviour of waxy oil, the modelling of wax deposition in production facilities and pipelines focuses on how soon wax would accumulate. The wax deposition simulation appears to be a more challenging task due to the high complexity and limited measured data available in the open literature. In this work, a compositional simulator is introduced to simulate the wax deposition in a pipeline. This model is founded on a thermodynamics model from our previous work and equipped with major wax deposition mechanisms as well as tuning function. Through four case studies, the model, with its prediction and tuning capability, has demonstrated a practical tool in flow assurance simulation. The results also suggest that a promising methodology can be applied in flow assurance study when the simulator is tuned with measurements from the high pressure deposition cell.