The benefits of a compositional thermal hydraulic integrated production model when investigating subsea processing

Subsea processing has become a promising technology for the offshore upstream oil and gas industry, which could solve many current and future field development challenges. Some authors are predicting a fivefold increase in annual spending on subsea processing from 2013 to 2020. It is becoming more common for offshore field development planners to consider subsea processing during conceptual design. However, like most production technologies, it is not appropriate for all projects at all points in their field life and hence should be looked at thoroughly when being considered. In this paper it is argued that many of the simplifications made in traditional Integrated Production Models (IPM) can lead to errors in the production forecast, particularly for subsea processing systems. Worse still, simple IPM lead to the slowing down of the design process, such that many of the cost and operability advantages and disadvantages of subsea processing are not investigated until the concept has already been selected. This paper discusses the benefits of compositional, thermal hydraulic integrated production models for the evaluation of subsea processing, illustrating many of the points with two case studies based on real projects; a subsea separation and a subsea compression study.