Flow Assurance in the Oil Industry

The gas and water injected to stimulate an increase in the extraction and production of oil can produce gas and sediments that alter significantly the life span of the flow lines, process equipments, and production tanks.

With the optimization of the implicit processes of oil production, oil’s flow assurance has become a key element to predict, prevent, mitigate, and remove organic and inorganic deposits. This engineer process analyses, secures, and guarantees efficient and economic transportation of hydrocarbons from the fields to the extraction and distribution points.

With the support of various disciplines like hydraulic, thermodynamic, chemistry and software engineer, it can be prevented harmful effects like corrosion and erosion that affect the flow and transportation of fluid, which constitutes the heart and soul of oil production.

To achieve such end, the content levels of CO2, paraffin deposits, hydrates, asphaltenes and incrustations are analyzed. While the fluids are transported to the production facility, changes in pressure and temperature can lead to formation, accumulation, and dispersion of organic and inorganic solid materials, as well as liquid and gas bags that can cause plugging at any stage of the hydrocarbon’s distribution system.

Flow assurance was used for the first time by the Brazilian company, PetroBras, in the 90’s, and it was used only in deep waters. It later became a method that attended more than corrective processes; it allowed predicting and attending flow issues to avoid possible damages, interruption of the processes, and posterior high costs.



The preventive factor of flow assurance has gain special importance because it allows the optimization of the production process at any stage, including starts, stops, and blockages. It is usually used as a chemical inhibitor to maintain the formation of incrustations and the production of the field; this goes from the basic dilution methods to more advance methods with effective inhibitor the act even before the process begins.

Popular posts from this blog

Hocal Pipe Industries: Types Of Oil Wells

Image
CATEGORIZING OILD FIELDS DEPEND ON THE INITIAL STUDIES; A KEY ELEMENT FOR EXTRACTION. The engineer and machinery involved in the processes of oil extraction are directly related to the type of oilfield to be drilled . The subsoil is intervened with bars of different diameters and coated pipes that, once introduced at different depth, allow prospection and extraction. To do so, categorizing the type of oilfield  constitutes the first step. Firstly, drilling the exploratory wells  is the common step to any extraction plan. The purpose is to determine the presence of hydrocarbon, as well as obtaining as much information as possible with a low cost. With this procedure, the data about the cuts, cores, and registers of the field will lead to the use of procedures to extract the hydrocarbon. The first thing to do is categorize the type of field Following the exploration, as it is highlighted by  Hocal Pipe Industries , making the estimations of field are d...
Read more

Desalination and Dehydration of Oil

Image
THE DESALINATION AND DEHYDRATION OF HYDROCARBON, PERFORMED UNDER DIFFERENT PROCESSES, ALLOWS THE EXTRACTION OF SALTS, WASTE AND WATERPROOF CONTENTS. When the oil is extracted from its depths, it usually goes through processes that make it suitable for its subsequent use. It often contains gases, unwanted contaminants, soluble solid particles such as sand and salts dissolved in water called brines. This salt leads to certain problems such as corrosion and tartar so it must be extracted from the crude. As the salt is diluted in water, desalination removes not only salt but also residual free water. To remove the salt from the oil, you can remove the water it contains, or dilute it. Desalters are used for this purpose that can perform both tasks and using electrostatic charge remove most of the water or inject clean water to dilute the salt concentration.   Oil goes through several processes for desalination and dehydration. The measurements of the typ...
Read more

Hocal Pipe Industries: Oil Engineers

Image
  The oil industry is a multidisciplinary one A multitasking job boosts optimization and development of the hydrocarbon industry, in which the oil engineer is one of the experts involved.    Oil engineer was born out of necessity to find and explore new oilfields. It is a combined science that studies hydrocarbons, search techniques, and field exploitation. The degree of specialization needed in the industry derived in stages: exploration, drilling, production, transportation, refining, selling, and negotiation of oil contracts. By mixing mathematical, physics, and chemical tools,  oil engineer  uses data provided by geographers, geologist, geophysics, chemists, and physics to optimize every aspect involved in the development of the industry ; as stated by the company  Hocal Pipe Industries . Starting from exploration, the search for hydrocarbons require a geological map to know the configuration of the subsoil strata. Another specializ...
Read more