Abstract
Canadian Natural Resources International (CNR) recognises, for the Columba E development, the benefits of using state of the art subsea technology to enhance production by means of optimising raw seawater.
The application of raw sea water injection offers an alternative to conventional topside water injection, minimising many recognised perceived topside challenges; such as topside weight and space constraints, availability of purified water, pipeline transportation from the platform to the satellite and the associated infrastructure installation and commissioning.
Subsea raw sea water injection has been developed over the last decade by Framo Engineering using the proven methods within their subsea pumping technology. Whilst a new application, subsea pumping technology is in operation across a number of fields world-wide with proven reliability and runtimes in excess of 700,000 hours. Extensive testing of key elements of the system further enhanced the confidence in the robustness and reliability of the complete system package. The system package included a Pump Control Module topside, umbilical and the Framo Dual Pump Station. This system approach ensured that there were minimal external interfaces and the technology resided as the responsibility on a single supplier.
This built confidence for CNR to commit to the world's first raw seawater injection system and that such a project could be delivered in an appropriate manner.
Subsea raw seawater injection offered a viable solution, adding significant injection capacity, with a significantly reduced impact to existing production facilities. In addition, the possibility to recover and re-deploy the system later in field life, either on the same development or in another area adjacent to the host adds further to the attraction to the system.
