Flow Assurance

Flow Assurance is the engineering and science of predicting and managing the production behavior of hydrocarbon as it moves from a reservoir to market through the changing environment of the production system. The term was coined by Petrobras in the early 1990s in Portuguese as Garantia do Escoamento (pt::Garantia do Escoamento), meaning literally “Guarantee of Flow”, or Flow Assurance.

In recent years, flow assurance becomes a vogue subject and with its popularity has come to a broadening to include a multiplicity of other issues which can affect the extraction of oil and gas. The flow assurances effectively handle many solid deposits, such as gas hydrates, asphaltene, wax, scale, and naphthenates. These solid deposits can interact with each other and can cause catastrophic blockage formation in pipelines and result in flow assurance failure. This particularly happens in the offshore sector, where the low temperatures, remote locations, and often the great water depths of the subsea environments conspire to exacerbate problems.

An earlier study on the behavior of the well is important to ensure problems are addressed to develop the best possible production solutions. 3Phase Reservoir Technologies Sdn Bhd through its fluid laboratory offers production chemistry studies of Wax & Asphaltene to support and provide solutions related to flow assurance activities.

• Wax Content
• Wax Appearance Temperature (WAT)
• SARA Analysis
• Crude Oil Rheology
• Wax Deposition rate
• Asphaltene content –Heptane & Pentane insoluble
• Measurement of Asphaltene onset pressure
• Pipeline restart at live condition
• Scale Inhibitor Effectiveness
• Bottle test