Application and Status of New Building Blocks for Subsea Boosting and Processing Systems

摘要

The clear trend for future oil and gas activities is that the production will come from mature fields, new smaller and marginal fields including tieback fields to existing infrastructure and also larger fields in deep and ultra-deep waters. The industry will be faced with several challenges both technical and economical as these fields may be complex in nature, tieback distances can be significant and so can the water depths. The relative low and often unstable oil prices that the industry has experienced the last years has also had a great impact on how these fields must be developed and operated. More cost-effective solutions must be developed to meet the challenges related to future exploration and productionf rom existing and new fields. All these new requirements have been the basis and background for the development of subsea pressure boosting and processing systems, which include several different technologies to enhance the production from new and mature fields. Most of these different technology building blocks are successfully being used by operators. This paper presents an overview of these new technologies, the main economical benefits and technical status. The system elements as described are mainly Framo technology or technology jointly being developed by Framo Engineering AS and ABB Offshore Systems AS (subsea separation and subsea power distribution).