Subsea Processing in Remote Marginal Fields

Abstract

Abstract With ever increasing energy demands and the depletion of hydrocarbon resources, marginal fields play an important role in oil and gas exploitation. Flow assurance issues, including wax and hydrate formation, can be found in long distance tiebacks. Subsea processing, where processing equipment is installed on the seabed, can be used to solve these flow assurance issues in remote marginal fields. Subsea processing is the leading edge technology for unlocking production from reservoir under complex conditions. This paper demonstrates the opportunities in marginal field development, and analyses the implication of applying subsea processing in remote marginal fields. The marginal field case study concerns a development with an 80 km tieback, having reserves of 120 million barrels of oil and in water 3,000 m deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The technical and economic aspects of two field development options, one employing subsea separation and boosting, and the other, an electric trace heated pipe-in-pipe flowline and subsea boosting, are compared. Hydraulic analysis of three phase flow (oil, gas, and water) using state of the art simulation software (OLGA) is performed to demonstrate production fluid behavior inside the flowline. Life cycle cost, combining both economic (CAPEX and OPEX) and risk factors (RAM), are used as the selection criterion. Subsea separation with continuous hydrate inhibitor injection can prevent flowline blockage over the field life, while the electric trace heated pipe-in-pipe option may require subsea boosting to override the large pressure drop in late field life. In the analysis, subsea separation shows potential life cycle cost savings of up to 13% compared to electric trace heated pipe-in-pipe, indicating it may be the appropriate option when developing fields with these specific conditions. Improvement of subsea processing requires more compact designs for deepwater applications, which will help reduce both capital investment and intervention cost.