State of the art of oil fields surface facilities technologies

摘要

More severe environmental regulations, the need of capex and opex reduction, productionfluid of poorer quality, more stringent product specifications and the requirement of moreflexible designs are probably the most important causes that have boosted during the lastdecade the technological evolution in the oil upstream sector.As a result, the state of art of technologies used in oil field surface facilities has considerablychanged.Several technologies are being more frequently used such as flow assurance, new internalcoatings and drag reduction agents, multiphase pumps, high efficiency four-phase separationequipment, compact oil conditioning equipment, high efficiency heat exchangers, heavy oiltransport and upgrade processes technologies, vapors recovery units, wet gas compressors,leak detection systems, complex control and safety systems, HIPPS and new corrosionmonitoring and control technologies.The above mentioned causes are also driven the use of cogeneration and combined cycles inthe sector.Each one of the previously mentioned technologies produces capex and opex savings e.g.decrease the number of pieces of equipment, plot area and civil works requirements, increaseof energy efficiency, add of value to products, better use of human resources and decrease ofcorrective maintenance costs, among others.The aim of this paper is to summarize the technological evolution of the oil upstream sector,identify the causes that promoted this evolution and present not only the use of recentlyproven technologies but the emerging ones.