Reliability Engineering Applied to Offshore Petroleum Production System

Different equipments combined compose an offshore petroleum production system. Several development alternatives are available for a given offshore petroleum field. The selection of the most suitable system for a given scenario depends on field development characteristics and strategies such as its geographical location, water depth, environmental conditions and knowledge about similar systems already selected and in use for oil and gas production and available infrastructure in around. For the purpose of field production system design a database with types of production platforms, mooring systems, subsea equipments, reservoir main characteristics, type of wells and lifting processes is fundamental. Today, offshore petroleum reservoir production is more and more complex due to several variables involved and requirement needed to meet deep and ultra deep water depth, pre-salt petroleum with aggressive fluid characteristics, fields in remote areas and other environmental issues. Large fields in deep and ultra deep water are particularly challenging due to little availability of suitable platform types, among known concepts such as floating, production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO), semisubmersible, spar and tension leg platform (TLP). In the present paper, a database for worldwide offshore petroleum systems in use has been elaborated by searching data available in the literature. The database is organized for more than three hundred platforms distributed on more than four hundred different offshore oil fields. To serve as a basis for the conceptual design of a field production system, this database contains information such as type of the platform, field location, water depth, days for the first production, type of well, completion, mooring system, riser and offloading system. This information is structured for different water depth and environmental condition, for each field. From this database, analysis has been conducted for distribution of each type of platform by worldwide region, distribution of each type of platform by the offshore field by region, among others analysis. Concept of Utility Functions are applied to represent technological trends and to be helpful in the process. Among the results, a preference for FPSOs and semisubmersible was observed in Brazil offshore, semisubmersible, TLPs and Spars in Gulf of Mexico. In Europe, particularly the North Sea, FPSO, semisubmersible, and few TLPs have been found. In West Africa, most of the field production is based on FPSOs, although some semisubmersible and TLP could be observed. Similar analyses were conducted in other regions. Results and discussions show preferences regarding technology selected by each region, region historical data, and growth of water depth in different fields.

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Selection of an Offshore Petroleum Production System by Evaluating an Environmental Impact Index

Volume 5: Materials Technology; Petroleum Technology ◽

10.1115/omae2014-23461 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Maiara Moreira Gonçalves ◽

Celso Kazuyuki Morooka ◽

Ivan Rizzo Guilherme

Keyword(s):

Environmental Impacts ◽

Production System ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Phase Iii ◽

Sensitivity Index ◽

Petroleum Reservoir ◽

Petroleum Production ◽

Offshore Production ◽

Selection Of ◽

Offshore Petroleum

The development of an offshore petroleum production system corresponds to define a set of equipment to make possible oil and gas extraction from an underwater petroleum reservoir. To better comprehension of the process, definition of this production system can be divided into phases. Phase I corresponds to the selection of number of wells and type of the well. Then, following the previous work (Franco, 2003), in the Phase II, the layout arrangement of wells and the set of the stationary Floating Production Unit (FPU) are selected. And, in the Phase III, storage and offloading alternatives for the produced oil and gas are selected. The present paper aims to identify environmental impacts associated with the each component of an offshore system for oil and gas production, and quantify each of them through indexes. It is expected to support the decision makers to select the best fitted system for a given offshore petroleum field. The increasing needs of petroleum to fulfill the energy matrix demanded in Brazil, the growing concern of the society for keeping the environment clean and the inclusion of an index related to the environment besides the technical and technological indexes usually taken makes it an important contribution to improve the process for selection and decision about the offshore production system. Particularly, it will be fundamental in the adverse condition of the Pre-salt scenario of petroleum production, in ultra-deep water depth and oil and gas with more aggressive contaminants to the system. The proposed methodology follows a similar procedure for the assessment of environmental impacts through the use of environmental sensitivity index (ESI) and the use of impact matrix (NOOA, 1997; Patin, 1999; Mariano and La Rovere, 2006). For the estimation of environmental impacts, it was defined the ESI of the area to be developed, and it was constructed an impact matrix based on the activities involved in the installation of platform, operational phase and decommissioning of a FPU and the elements from environment. Therefore, this systematic and structured approach allowed incorporating to the process of selection of the offshore production system for an oil and gas field the selection of alternative which combines the best technical and technological characteristics with better aspects from the environment.

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