Brief: Offshore North Sea Case Histories of the Environmentally Friendly Testing Vessel, the Crystal Sea

摘要

One problem during offshore well-test operations, stimulations, and routine workovers are discharges into the air and sea while flaring These procedures are usually performed by mobile drilling rigs with no storage capacity, and thus, hydrocarbons sequestered must be burned off from the rig flare booms Another major problem has been the inability of the flare to operate at high flow rates Because the burning process slows the pace of a test, restricting full flow testing, valuable well information is lost Flaring of hydrocarbons also represents an economic loss In the case of oil rigs, for example, flaring not only emits CO_2 into the atmosphere but also burns off usable oil The Crystal Sea well-test vessel was designed to address the problems inherent to flaring and, at the same time, provide cost efficiency by salvaging usable oil during well testing The success of her initial two jobs on the Statfjord North satellite field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea confirms that sale of the salvaged oil normally lost during the flaring process could generate sufficient economic return to pay for the vessel In addition, with its capability to receive products at twice the flow rate of conventional methods, the increased accuracy of the technical information obtained from the well test further enhances its value for improved reservoir management.