Page 18: of Offshore Energy Reporter Magazine (January 2015)

Technology

Subsea Processing

Boosting and Gas Compression Enabled through

HV Wet Mate Connectors and Penetrators ffshore drilling activity con- such as subsea boosting and subsea gas that are currently inaccessible due to tinues to migrate into deeper compression allow subsea processing hazards like icebergs and hurricanes waters, especially with new of hydrocarbons to change the eco- • Increasing operational safety and

O oil and gas discoveries happening in nomics of deepwater production. reducing risks smaller reservoirs located in deeper Processing the hydrocarbons on the The deeper the well is, the more waters. Making these discoveries com- seabed has several advantages: potential energy is required to reach mercially viable relies on not only rev- • Saving the multibillion dollar the host platform at the surface. Sub- enue from high oil and gas prices but cost of building a new platform by sea boosting increases the fowrate of also on reducing operating expenses providing tiebacks to shore or existing the oil or gas to the surface by reduc- (OPEX) and capital expenditures facilities ing the back pressure on the well, (CAPEX). Oil and gas producers are • Enhancing oil/gas recovery rates and therefore increases the recovery now looking at new technologies to to increase the income per CAPEX factor of the reservoir. For oil, pump- produce effectively these high-pres- dollar ing can be used, while natural gases sure, complex reservoirs. Technologies • Enabling future access to reserves are boosted by compression. Another technique, which can be used in com- bination with pumping, is to separate the water and oil/gas, injecting the water back into the reservoir to limit pressure drops in the well. This not only saves energy (of getting the wa- ter to the topside facility and down again into the well), it also saves a lot of space and weight on the heavily crowded topside facilities.

Moving processing from the plat- form or shorelines to the seabed cre- ates challenges in the design and deployment of the processing equip- ment. A limiting factor is the weight

Figure 1: of such equipment, especially in deep

Wet-mate Power waters. Weight (and size) issues re-

Connectors quire that the equipment is designed in a modular fashion.

[photo: TE Connectivity / DEUTSCH connectors]

January 2015

OFFSHORE ENGINEERING REPORTER 20 |