Management of flow assurance project risk

Abstract

In systems where fluid is flowing from the reservoir to the surface, there are a number of potential flow assurance issues such as the deposition of hydrate resulting in the blockage of the flowline, and slugging in the flowline or riser, which could promote production interruption or weaken the system deliverability of the fluid significantly. Therefore, the industry is starting to consider that the analysis of potential flow assurance issues and the development of the management plan be implemented in an early phase of the project. To conduct a flow assurance study in an early phase of the project it is essential to obtain basic project information such as PVT analysis results, the oil and gas production plan and a rough plan for the wells and host allocation. Such information is, however, inherently not well defined in such an early phase and its use will therefore result in the creation of greater risk in the execution of the project. In this report, a method to introduce a “Flow Assurance Map” has been proposed, which is to view such potential project risks comprehensively in the early phases of a project and manage those risks.