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and operation of the Troll wells, six subsea separators and a and its successful implementation

Subsea subsea separation pilot, a foating production storage-offoading is just beyond the horizon. “From study conducted by Douglas- system (FPSO). This project area Statoil’s point of view, the technol-

Westwood Energy Research includes fve felds with an estimated ogy is defnitely doable,” he says.

Group indicated that indus- 400MMbbl of heavy crude oil. “It is really just a question of eco- try enthusiasm towards this In 2011, the technological and nomic incentive and necessity. technology was on the rise. economical advantages of subsea “Realistically, I believe that we

Although actual industry separation technology enabled Shell will have installed a fully opera- participation in the develop- to make history with the Perdido tional subsea processing system ment of subsea processing project. Located in the Gulf of by 2020,” he says. “However, in was still relatively insignif- Mexico, the Perdido project has set the meantime, we are going to see cant, the Douglas-Westwood multiple offshore industry world multiple technological develop- report revealed that 90% of records, including recognition as ments regarding subsea separation operators expected to utilize this technol- the world’s deepest oil development systems. These include second- ogy within 10 years. and deepest drilling and production ary separation on the seafoor,

These predictions began to material- platform. Additionally, it is predicted improved effciency of current ize with the successful start-up of the to produce from the deepest subsea separation systems and a larger world’s frst full-feld subsea separation well on earth. utilization of subsea compression system on the Statoil-operated Tordis technology.”

The Future feld in 2007. Because of subsea process- Recent trends seem to indicate ing advantages, operators in the Tordis Kimball says that current technolog- that industry confdence regard-

The Perdido project has set multiple world records, largely due to the use of subsea separation technology.

feld were able to increase recovery by ical developments will eventually ing the effectiveness of subsea

Photo from Shell.

35MMbbl while extending the expected lead to full subsea processing. “The separation technology is gaining feld life by almost 20 years. technology developments in the area of often through joint industry programs, considerable momentum. As the cost

Soon to follow was Shell’s Parque subsea separation are related to ultra- which are undertaken in collabora- beneft analysis of SSUs becomes clearer das Conchas project (BC-10) off Brazil, deep separation solutions in addition to tion with operators that will deploy the with the increased participation of major which has the distinction of hosting the further treatment and separation steps technology.” operators, one can expect the remainder world’s frst subsea system with gas- that are required after the primary separa- According to Ramburg, the technology of the industry to follow suit in utilizing liquid separation and boosting. This tion,” Kimball says. “FMC Technologies to successfully implement a full-scale this technology to increase deepwater system was developed with 13 subsea is already qualifying these methods, subsea processing system already exists, production.

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