This paper is to represent reviews of low dosage hydrate inhibitor's (LDHI) evolution and advances, and to provide a general guide for LDHI considerations, historically, hydrate risk has been managed by keeping the fluids warm, removing water, and/or by injecting thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (THI), commonly methanol or glycol. THIs require high dosage rate therefore production systems can reach a treatment limited by supply, storage, and umbilical injection constraints. Besides, high dosage of MeOH can cause crude contamination for downstream refineries, which may result in penalty. Over last two decades LDHIs have been extensively researched and developed as an alternative hydrate management chemical for oil and gas industry. LDHIs are divided into two main categories; Kinetic Hydrate Inhibitor (KHI) and Anti-Agglomerant (AA), both have been successfully used in field applications, but each comes with their unique challenges for applications, OPEX and CAPEX considerations. LDHIs have proven track records in numerous fields in their performance, either as stand-alone chemical treatment or reducing amounts of methanol/glycol usage, which has directly resulted in CAPEX and OPEX reduction. LDHIs have been instrumental in managing risks of early water breakthrough, high cost of THI storage and transportation, HSSE concerns around THI handling, and undersized pump capacity for required chemical volumes. Switching to LDHIs also offers an economic advantage by reducing umbilical line diameter. Latest advances in the LDHI technology is breaking barriers and pushing limits. The paper summarizes historical advancements in LDHIs over the last two decades, discusses application advantages and limitations, and the criterions to consider for selecting LDHIs.

This is a study on how subsea processing be the enabling technologies for future ultra-deepwater field developments and long distance tiebacks. This study identifies the gaps that need to be closed and decision making process during the field development life cycle by considering both the technical and economic constraints of various subsea processing technologies. As E&P companies continue to explore for oil & gas deeper and further into sea, the challenges associated with developing the deepwater fields are bound to escalate. Subsea processing technologies are the fastest growing technologies due to their huge potential to increase recoverable reserves and to accelerate production. It also enables for cost saving by moving some of the traditional topsides processing to seabed. As the reliability of subsea processing equipment is increasing, the industry is gaining more confidence in subsea processing. As industry gains more experience of design and operating subsea processing technologies, and closing the gaps, it improves understanding of the technology and making advancement to counter the challenges associated with harsher environments and complex fields. Properly-designed modularized compact subsea processing kits can be economic to deploy, and may potentially become an enabler for certain types of marginal field developments. This paper addresses the challenges of reservoir characteristics and fluid properties, cost, risk, reliability, operability, installability, maintainability and intervention complexities; assesses the existing and emerging technologies; focuses on improving efficient compact design to reduce bulky and heavy equipment, achieving separation from heavy oil, and disposal of separated water. Certainly there are limitations in making the subsea processing viable and accessible to all operators but the technology needs and industry collaboration should overcome these challenges. Also there are opportunities for improvement and standardization, and modular design processing systems for reservoir suitability, field layout and topsides support.

This paper screens the existing and emerging alternative energy generation technologies that can be potentially used for offshore power and selects the top 10 for further discussion and analyses. The objective is to provide the industry a clear understanding of the status and future potential of these technologies. The technologies to be evaluated are divided into two categories - existing and emerging. For existing technologies, the evaluation is conducted from a holistic point of view and present conclusion based on key factors such as: cost, efficiency, safety and environmental impacts, reliability, deployment potential and production capacity. Whereas, emerging technologies are evaluated based on Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and potential. Based on the evaluation, the top 10 technologies are selected for further analysis, which range from renewable, nuclear and other alternative energies. The oil and gas industry is gradually moving towards deeper and more distant offshore developments. At the same time, the power requirement on these facilities is increasing rapidly. So far operators have used localized open cycle gas turbine or diesel generators to meet their demand, which produces high levels of CO2 and NOx. The cost, weight, and deck space requirement associated with power generation units have also increased significantly. The power generation requirement has been a critical element for floating structure design (payload) and offshore field development (cost). Driven by the global demands for climate change control, and greenhouse gas emission, the need to find more viable solutions for alternative energy is becoming inevitable. The offshore industry starts to re-visit the potential of powering offshore facility with alternative and renewable energies once were thought was impractical for offshore because of their unsustainability. These new technologies will transform the oil and gas industry and will power our way towards future developments where power requirement will be in the magnitude of 100s of MW. The technologies, which offer great potential but haven't been used in oil and gas industry are considered and evaluated. Small case studies are presented to highlight their practical applications and results.