24

If you ask 10 specialists, What is fow

assurance?, you are likely to receive
10 different answers. Some may provide
broad, generic statements about
hydrocarbon transportability. Others
may confne themselves to a more limited
scope, emphasizing the use of chemicals
to prevent deposits or of simulators
to predict fuid dynamics or thermal
issues. I was never quite satisfed
with such answers, so let me offer an
11th defnition: Flow assurance is the
technical discipline that guarantees
achievement of a lifting and transport
systems lifetime production targets
from the near-wellbore to offoading
tanksby predicting, preventing, and
solving problems originated by the
behavior of the transported substances
(i.e., gases, liquids, and solids either
separated or in multiphase conditions).
This long defnition emerged as an
attempt to encompass each different facet
of my everyday activities, which I will try
to clarify one by one.
First, a focus on fow assurance has
some physical boundaries. Qualitatively,
whenever fow from the reservoir is
confned within a very limited space,
fow assurance starts becoming an
issue. This may happen in pipes of any
sort (e.g., well tubings, fowlines, and
pipelines), but also in plant facilities (e.g.,
valves, manifolds, separators, and slug
catchers) and in that rather fuzzy region
called the near-wellbore, where the
fuids must accelerate and squeeze close
together to enter the well. The property
common to all these places is that even
tiny transformations produced by the
fuids traversing them may have drastic
effects on the capability to produce the
desired hydrocarbon fow.
This leads to the real heart of
fow assurance: the behavior of what
moves in those restricted spaces.
Hydrocarbons will be thereeither in
vapor or liquid form (or both)but so
will reservoir water, reinjection water,
sand, corrosion products, formation
debris, asphaltenes, particles, and other
components. Combinations of immiscible
substances, such as emulsions (liquid/
liquid) and foams (vapor/liquid), have
properties of their own, quite different
from those of the composing fuids,
and deserve special descriptions. In
this complex context, the frst objective
of fow assurance is making sure we
deeply understand the behavior of such
substances so a reservoirs production
targets can be achieved.
During the design phase, the main
focus is on prediction and prevention
of the issues that may adversely affect
the expected production profle. Some
phenomena may reduce the rate while
others may become show-stoppers,
leading to months of production
stoppages and expensive interventions.
During the operation phase, the main
focus is instead on control, early
detection, and problem solving.
The following is a summary of typical
fow assurance problems:
Lack of reservoir energy to push
hydrocarbons to the receiving facilities
Buildup of deposits of asphaltenes,
wax, inorganic scale, or sand (or a
mixture of these)
Formation of hydrate plugs
Occurrence of unacceptable fow
regimes, such as severe slugging or
erosional velocities
Emulsions, fuids with high yield-
stress, sludges, naphtenates
Liquid loading of pipelines and wells
Corrosion phenomena induced by
water settling and low velocities
The following are typical solutions in
the fow assurance toolbox:
Optimal diameter, route, and
number of pipes
Artifcial lift technologies, such as
pumping/compression technologies,
multiphase pumps, and gas lift
Thermal insulation or active
heating, to prevent hydrates and wax
deposition during steady production and
delay the formation of hydrates during
shutdowns
Use of internal pipe coatings
Active fow control (by valves or
chemical products)
Regular use of inhibitors, pour point
depressants, or solvents
Injection of hydrate inhibitors
(thermodynamic, kinetic, or colloidal)
Use of emulsion breakers or
foamers/defoamers in wells and
pipelines
Pigging, for liquids or deposits
removal
Of course, if our list does not contain
the right solution, we can always invent
it! Flow assurance is a discipline in which
innovations are often relatively easy to
prototype and transfer to the feld and
can provide a competitive advantage.
So, how do we do all the above in
practice? We frst have to make sure
we deeply understand the behavior
of the several relevant substances.
The optimum places for dissecting
and understanding fuid behavior are
laboratories and fow loops. A fow
assurance specialist can greatly beneft
from repeated and direct observation
and manipulation of substances moving
in pipes or subjected to pressure and
temperature changes, or mixed together
or separated.
In fow assurance studies, fuid
behavior is predicted by mathematical
models. But any model is only a
representation of the real situation.
Personal observation of intricate
phenomena, such as emulsion formation
and breaking, solids dispersion, and
slug movement, leads to understanding
what is captured and what is omitted
by a given model. Our most important
(and diffcult) decision is to select the
right tool to predict the behavior of
Discover a Career:
Flow Assurance
Alberto Di Lullo, Eni E&P
Discover a Career
25 Vol. 8 // No. 1 // 2012
interest. Familiarity with both frsthand
observation and the outcome of models is
a great success factor!
Another key success factor is feeling
at home in plants and in discussions with
operators and technicians. Experience
in real plants is superb for acquiring a
deep knowledge about the behavior of
substances, but with one caveat: Most
plants are not instrumented or operated
to expose specifc phenomena. If you
learn how to develop and connect your
measurement tools and, of course, win
the confdence of some operators, each
plant can become a unique laboratory to
work with. For example, as I write this, I
am on a boat returning from a platform in
West Africa. I was there to contribute to
the solution of a production problem, but
I also installed temporary sensors and
performed specifc observations. Beyond
getting clues about the diagnosis, it has
been a lot of fun and extremely instructive.
Whatever the origin of the data
(laboratory, plant, databases, and so
forth), their effective processing for
fow assurance purposes calls for the
use of software, either for modeling
physical/chemical effect or for statistical
and presentation purposes. Several
commercial tools are recognized
as industry standards (e.g., for
thermodynamics or fuid dynamics
modeling), thereby ensuring a general
consensus exists about the validity of
their outcomes. Moreover, individual
companies often make a choice as to
which tool to use for the simulation of
specifc phenomena (e.g., hydrates
formation or slugging). A hands-on and
critical understanding of the above codes
(even those used by other disciplines)
is important for achieving signifcant
results. Flow assurance objectives call
for a broad vision and a cooperative
mind-set: Lack of understanding of
neighboring workfows and tools only
results in misleading judgments.
Also, the capability to develop
additional pieces of ad hoc code
can make a decisive difference in
development projects or feld assistance.
The use of many languages contributes
to faster, better outcomes, especially
under severe workload pressure.
Luckily, most of my colleagues happen to
be quite good at programming, or have
become so after realizing the benefts.
The following are a couple of fnal
ingredients for the fow assurance
recipe: a good understanding of
intrusive/mechanical intervention (e.g.,
pigging, hot tapping, and coiled tubing)
and recognition of the value of context.
The former is easy to understand:
Whatever prevention efforts we apply,
both the continuous thrust toward cost
optimization and the lack of information
during the design phase lead to the
potential for problems during any felds
life. If these happen, physical actions (as
opposed to soft, chemical intervention)
may re-establish control. Operators are
often reluctant to apply intrusive actions
(such as pigging), since mistakes during
their execution may worsen the situation.
Here, though, is where new technologies
may be of great help. Flow assurance
specialists should always consider the
generation and development of new
concepts and tools as an integral part
of their job. In fact, this is a discipline in
which every day presents opportunities
for the application of new ideas in
cooperation with operators.
The latter ingredientthe value
of contextis not easy to explain: It
must be breathed. However, we can
achieve unbelievable results when
general-purpose reasoning gives way
to specifc, context-driven reasoning.
Some say that the devil is in the
details, but masterpieces are also
in the details: Good cooks adapt the
recipe to the ingredients. Challenging
generic engineering margins is an
example of this. When we apply the
fow assurance toolbox to a producing
feld with strong reference to its actual
constraints, degrees of freedom, and
history, impressive optimizations can
be achieved (e.g., in the consumption
of chemicals, in downtimes, and in
environmental impact).
I sincerely hope young engineers,
physicists, and chemists have the
opportunity to delve into the intricacies
of the discipline of fow assurance. I
believe it is a beautiful subject that
can give multidisciplinary insight
into mechanisms at work in the feld
in this industry. The prospect of
becoming a bridge between people
speaking different languages is a
key characteristic of fow assurance
specialistsin one instance discussing
scanning tunneling microscopy, and
switching to hot tapping the very next
meeting. It is no wonder I have never
been bored in the last 20 years! TWA
Discover a Career
Alberto Di Lullo has worked for Eni E&P since 1991. He is
currently fow assurance senior advisor and manages the fow
assurance engineering technologies group. He has more than
40 publications and several patents related to upstream
technologies to his name. Di Lullo was appointed SPE
Distinguished Lecturer (200708), received the Best Quality
Paper Award at the 2005 Offshore Mediterranean Conference,
and was awarded the Eni E&P Technology Prize in 2002. He
just fnished serving as program chairman of SPEs Italian Section and currently
serves on SPE international committees.