ExxonMobil Development Company (EMDC) recently completed a qualification program which included a multiphase, subsea separation system for shallow-water applications. This paper summarizes the results from this qualification program.
Developments and advances in subsea processing technologies and the application of such technologies have been fueled by recent economic considerations in the oil and gas industry, as fields are maturing and operating companies strive to maintain oil and gas production. To-date, companies have executed project-specific qualification programs which take years of upfront engineering. The intent of this qualification program was to develop subsea separation technologies for the "global" subsea portfolio, rather than a specific project.
To cover the "global" subsea portfolio, a separator design was chosen that would meet separation performance targets over a wide range of operating conditions. For subsea applications, availability and reliability is critical, as unplanned intervention costs are extremely high; therefore, only certain internals were recommended to avoid plugging and fouling issues. Also, the separator was equipped with sand handling internals, including sand jetting headers and sand removal cyclones, to allow online fluidization and removal of accumulated sand. Qualification activities included the development of a subsea processing template, design validation of a multiphase separator design using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and performance tests with model fluids and "live" fluids, and performance tests on the sand handling equipment. High-level results from these tests are shared.
Prior to the qualification programs, experience with subsea separation technologies, and subsea processing as a whole, within ExxonMobil was limited to being an active partner with subsea processing projects such as Tordis and Pazflor. Following the execution of the aforementioned qualification programs, technical risks have been mitigated, such that it is now possible to be confident in applying these technologies in the "global" subsea portfolio. This will enable ExxonMobil to reduce the cost and schedule impact of upfront engineering on future subsea processing projects. In the ever-changing business environment of the oil and gas industry, this may become a preferred approach to bring unproven technologies to maturity when the business need is well-established.
