Subsea Processing Equipment: A Strategy for Effective Assessment and Selection

Abstract

Subsea processing equipment’s are deployed in Deepwater / subsea marginal field, fields having challenging reservoir characteristics (which includes: high viscosity, high GVF) in order to economically recover oil and gas. They includes: multiphase booster pump, subsea separation and compression equipment’s. These equipment’s faces a high level of uncertainty as regards well and reservoir conditions, putting the equipment in an unfavorable condition covering a wide and variable range of processes including transient Flow, variable oil flow, fluid pressures, temperature and gas compression effects. More so, knowledge engineers in different areas are assessing this domain in different ways making the performance parameters and relations to be defined differently when utilizing computer based tools for assessment and selection. A four step process is proposed which are: domain knowledge acquisition, failure data analysis, knowledge model and a knowledge base system will reveal the key components and parameters that are needed to make an optimum decision. The applicability of these four step process is demonstrated in the assessment and selection of subsea multiphase booster pumps.