George Trowbridge, OTM Consulting
Steve Robertson, Douglas-Westwood
With the promise of allowing simple, economic access to reserves that are either too small to warrant a surface facility or could not be developed because of long tieback distances or platform processing bottlenecks, many thought subsea processing (use of either subsea multiphase pumps or separators) would quickly become a major part of oil companies’ technology portfolio. Why not - when for example there are many onshore and surface applications of multiphase pumping worldwide?
Current projects of note include the significant trialing of liquid separation, multiphase boosting, and injection on Statoil’s North Sea Tordis field, which is tied back to Gullfaks C.
With its first application in 1970 and only a few applications since, the acceptance of subsea processing in field design has been slow, even by oil industry standards. However, the time when subsea processing systems will become part of the suite of technologies regularly (even if not frequently) deployed on fields finally could be drawing near.
For the last 10 years, we have been watching the evolution of the oil companies’ attitude toward subsea processing, in order to understand what they regard as the real benefits to be and when they believe that it will finally become a routine part of their offshore technology portfolio.
A recent survey of over 30 leading subsea experts from oil companies around the world assesses the development of the operators’ attitude towards the technologies and compares the results with surveys we performed in 2000 and 2003.
In 2000, subsea processing was seen as a niche sector of the market, with a small number of experts and evangelists driving the use of the technology forward. However, the change in the last six years has been dramatic. Now, subsea processing is being considered as an option by the majority of the larger oil companies on many of their new field development prospects and as an option to retrofit to existing fields. Even some of the smaller oil companies are now considering subsea processing.
The reason for this change of view could be that the last six years has also seen a change in the subsea processing market drivers. While in the past, the drivers that have encouraged interest in this area have been evenly spread between certain technical, production and financial factors, production related drivers (increased production rate, increased ultimate recovery, etc.) are now seen as being much more important.
Changes have also been identified in oil companies’ perceptions of the barriers preventing the uptake of subsea processing. While both psychological hurdles (e.g. the naturally risk averse nature of oil companies) and financial hurdles (e.g. capital costs) are still high on the list of barriers to the uptake of subsea processing, there has been a shift in operator opinions so that now equipment reliability and operability is now seen as the highest ranked barrier.
One theme raised by a number of the operators has been the issue of subsea equipment standardization. Adoption of standard building block solutions means that suppliers do not have to focus time on designing and testing new interface components, but instead on improving the key elements of their products. A number of working groups have been set up by operators to address standardization.
These changes in the drivers of and barriers to subsea processing are reflected in the forecast uptake of the technology. In our 2000 and 2003 surveys, a number of fields were identified as possible sites for subsea processing, while in the latest 2006 survey, several oil companies now have firm plans to use subsea processing, with potential areas of application spanning all the major deepwater regions of the world. Indeed, two current projects of note are the multiphase pumping due to start in full on BP’s King field in the Gulf of Mexico in 2007 and the significant trialing of liquid separation, multiphase boosting and injection on Statoil’s North Sea Tordis field, which is tied back to Gullfaks C.
Of course, there are still a number of factors that will prevent some fields from ever being suitable for the technologies, however, it does now appear that the era of subsea processing as a routine part of field development is about to dawn.
High oil prices have made the prospect of increasing field recovery factors the main one driving an upsurge in interest in subsea processing.
The second edition of the OTM/Douglas-Westwood study The Subsea Processing Gamechanger Report covering the period 2006-2015, outlines industry understanding of the subject and provides an insight into the future application of subsea processing technology, the impact that it will have and forecasts potential levels of expenditure.
Further details on the study can be obtained fromwww.dw-1.com.
