Flow Assurance in Subsea Pipeline Design for Transportation of Petroleum Products

Abstract

Transportation of petroleum products through pipeline presents considerable risks including wax formation and deposition as a result of heat loss of fluids, which is harmful to the flow due to the reduced inner diameter or totally blocked pipelines in extreme cases. The production interruption due to blocked pipelines can cause colossal financial loss. Therefore, in order to diminish those adverse effects, it is critical that pipeline design for flow assurance should be considered. Flow assurance is a relatively new field in oil and gas industry, it means that the flow of hydrocarbon stream from one point to another must be ensured successfully and economically. Although flow assurance is extremely diverse, encompassing many discrete and specialized subjects and bridging across the full gamut of engineering disciplines, our work concentrated principally on the study of wax deposit in the pipelines. The main purpose of this paper is to focus on the aspect of material in pipeline design and the selection of thermal insulation coatings. Furthermore, operating parameters such as pressure, temperature and flowrate will be examined to achieve optimum results. For the case study in this paper, the pipeline connecting Ca NguVang Oilfield's Wellhead Platform (WHP) to the Central Processing Platform of Bach Ho Oilfield (CPP-3) in Vietnam will be studied. Hence, this work covers several aspects, namely the theoretical study, the modeling using Excel as well as using specialized software OLGA, and finally the application for a real case in the petroleum industry in Vietnam.

Paraffin wax deposition and its remediation methods on crude oil pipelines: A systematic review

“…The offshore platform was so severely damaged by wax deposition that it was abandoned at the cost of $100,000,000. (Pham et al, 2017). According to studies, solid accumulation in the interior walls of production and transportation pipes and on the equipment surface was the most typical cause of the flow assurance problem (Subramanie et al, 2020).…”

A Three-stage Hybrid Multi-criteria Model for the Selection of Material for Subsea Pipeline Design Considering Several Environmental Scenario.

“…Corrosion-resistant alloys, although known to be an excellent alternative to conventional carbon steel materials, carry a limitation when the factor of the cost is put into play. In this sense, non-metallics are gaining more and more appeal and attention, given their potential to minimize the cost of both corrosion management and material [16].…”