The reason for processing to take place offshore as opposed to onshore, is the need to reduce the products volatility and remove all contaminants i.e. water and sand, all of which can prove problematic during transport, whether by ship or subsea pipeline.
The process of raw produce is everything that takes place between the well Christmas trees and export lines. Dependent on the reservoir the well is coming from this can be in the form of oil, gas or a mixture. As a very basic example of offshore processing, a diagram below has been used to show processing from mixed raw produce.
Once the extraction is done from the WELLs, the produce is Artificial lifted or Gas lifted from the Christmas tree to platform, Production Separator. When the well is relatively new the downhole pressure is enough to lift the produce, with the time is necessary to inject some fluid or gas in the hole to increase the pressure. Once is lifted, to start the production it is necessary to decrease the pressure.
Production Separators, the main three components we have ion the process are the crude oil, gas and produced water. The fluid is obtained in a pressure over 50 bars and a temperature over 100ºC. The separation process with be performed repeatedly until the three components would be separated completely.
The following steps would be to take the oil and gas on the separators for further break downs on different products.
- Oil Process; It’s common for crude oil to be put through a coalescer as its final stage of processing.
- Gas Processing; even the gas has been separated and cleaned from the oil and waters, the gas needs further cleaning. This gas is entered in a LP/HP process of compressors and separators for this treatment.
- Processed water, All water removed from the well fluid will be cleaned and treated before returning it back to the sea.
- Storage; it is common practice for the oil platforms to store the oil produced in tanks within its legs.
- Metering and exporting; last stage of the process. We would be on the point of sale.
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