Flow Assurance Challenges in Subsurface Production and Injection Systems

Dear Colleagues,

In a technical sense, flow assurance ensures that fluids produced from or injected into the subsurface reach storage or processing facilities consistently, reliably, and economically, over the life of a project in any environment. To ensure smooth and seamless flow of hydrocarbon fluids from source to the end user, a holistic approach is required to identify potentially problematic oil and gas fields; design/manufacture and install customized equipment to handle the logistics of fluids transportation; reduce the likelihood of fluid flow interruptions; remediate such encounters with thermal, mechanical, or chemical methods; and implement optimization strategies to improve the fluid flow and transport. A properly integrated flow assurance plan involves various science and engineering disciplines and includes several stages, such as sampling, analysis, experimental studies, modelling, and simulation. Flow assurance is the most critical design and operational task in offshore production, especially deep-water operations where the likelihood of production impediments is enormously increased due to high pressures and low temperature, and intervention methodologies and operations are complex and costly.

Flow assurance studies usually entail physical experiments, engineering modelling, and numerical simulation to assess the risks associated with uninterrupted hydrocarbon fluids flow from oil and gas reservoirs. Managing the risks associated with fluid flow disturbance is strongly related to any change in equilibrium of the hydrocarbon fluid. Changes in thermodynamic conditions and fluid phase can result in catastrophic flow assurance failures that cover a wide range of issues, such as formation, accumulation, and dispersion of hydrocarbon solids, as well as inorganic scale, generation of tight emulsions, slugging in flowlines, and corrosion, along with their associated interactions with each other. In other words, fluid flow interruptions can originate from an interrelated combination of factors, involving production chemistry and flow behaviour and dynamics. The chances of fluid flow interruptions due to inorganic scales, hydrates, and tight emulsions rise with transition from conventional production to mature fields where fluids chemistry significantly changes, and other non-native fluids are introduced into the reservoir for production enhancement. Oil production impairment due to wax and asphaltene issues, on the other hand, could even appear at early production stages depending on flow dynamics in reservoir or pipeline, chemistry of fluids (both the non-native and in situ fluids), and operating conditions (pressure and temperature). The goal of this Special Issue, dedicated to flow assurance challenges in the petroleum industry, is to provide a forum for submissions related, but not limited, to the following areas:

• Recent advances and solution methodologies to prevent, control or remediate loss of production due to flow assurance issues;
• Lab/pilot-scale experimental studies, engineering modelling, and numerical simulation efforts aimed at acquiring a better understanding of the physics of production loss due to flow assurance issues, along with prevention and remediation techniques;
• Field-scale case studies involving implementation of control/prevention techniques for minimization of adverse impacts associated with flow assurance issues.

Dr. Lesley James
Dr. Omid Mohammadzadeh
Guest Editors

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• petroleum industry
• flow assurance
• asphaltene
• wax
• hydrate
• inorganic scales
• emulsion
• slugging
• corrosion
• offshore
• pipeline
• experimental
• modelling
• simulation