Abstract
It’s no common news were pipelines/facility may be oversized or undersized, due to some certain traditional norms or nominal constraints imposed. When considered with the harsh subsea environments and long tie backs which the industry experiences these days, then it is highly important that the design of the production surface network is optimized efficiently. It could save remarkably millions of dollars. All thanks to advanced modelling approaches, where the concept of integrated modelling has shone brightly.
The traditional methods practiced by the flow assurance engineer involves obtaining reservoir simulation production profiles either uncertainty profiles (P10, P50 & P90) to early, mid and late field life for engineering design/debottlenecking of surface networks. These methods rely heavily on the assumption that those profiles which form the basis of design are healthy for providing boundary conditions for the surface network. In most cases the engineer does not contest/ understand how these profiles were obtained from reservoir simulation and what controls the wells were subjected to. As an example, a natural well could have been subjected to a nominal well tubing head pressure control (staying constant) for about three quarter of its life. This is a major limitation or "gap" in the traditional approach; it could lead to wrong design and estimations of the thermo-hydraulic responses.
In this paper we introduce the concept of integrated modelling for the flow assurance engineer and compare it to the traditional approach. We show three case studies. The first shows a real case where the IAM corrected a design for a North Sea gas condensate field saving millions of dollars. The second shows how IAM aids an engineer in sizing a line with known indicators such as (mean slug length, Erosion velocity) and the third uses the integrated model to identify wax, asphaltenes and corrosion possible areas.
