SureStream® FlowAssurance Services

Maximizing production and managing costs by assuring that flow lines and pipelines are free of wax, scale, asphaltene, gas hydrates, or other restrictions have become both more important and increasingly difficult to manage. Evolving wellsite economics have forced oil and gas producers to optimize profitability by developing more technically challenging reservoirs, whether in exploration frontiers or mature petroleum provinces.

Oilfield services companies generally have kept pace with producers' and pipeline operators' flow assurance needs by developing and commercializing a host of reasonably effective and reliable flowline and pipeline remediation technologies, treatment processes and maintenance programs. Yet, as the availability of effective flow-assurance solutions has proliferated, the greater breadth of downhole environments and more demanding transportation requirements have considerably heightened the challenge of selecting the best technical solution for a given application.

At the same time, the greater size and scope of many upstream oil and gas projects and increasing use of multiphase flow strategies have increased both the risk and consequences of selecting a less-than-optimal flow-assurance solution.

The challenge of choosing the best treatment option is complicated by the fragmented nature of the oilfield services industry in the 21st Century, in which products and services routinely are marketed as discrete, standalone solutions. Simply put, when asked to alleviate a flowline or pipeline blockage, a chemical supplier is almost certain to recommend a chemical solution, while a pigging company is likely to recommend a pigging solution. Conversely, a service company is unlikely to recommend a solution it either can't provide or is unfamiliar with, no matter how likely its chances for success.

Integrated flow-assurance alliance
To help bring greater certainty to selecting the best treatment options for today's more demanding flow-assurance problems, a group of pre-eminent oilfield service firms, led by Halliburton, have joined forces in an integrated global flow-assurance alliance, called SureStream® Flow Assurance Services.

The members include Halliburton Pipeline and Process Services of Halliburton's Energy Services Group, Halliburton engineering and construction subsidiaries KBR and Granherne, the international subsea technology company Subsea 7, the U.K.-based pigging technology company Pipeline Engineering, and Intertek Caleb Brett subsidiary Westport International.

SureStream® Flow Assurance Services can draw upon the combined knowledge and practical experience of these member companies to offer a global, comprehensive integrated suite of flow-assurance products and services applicable throughout every stage of project implementation, from inception through completion, including front-end engineering design (FEED) and engineering, remediation, intervention, and post-treatment operating and maintenance support.

For the first time, through SureStream® Flow Assurance Services, operators will have seamless access to a wide range of diagnostic, remedial, and maintenance and support services, capable of addressing virtually any flow assurance issue, simply by contacting any one of the members' offices around the world.

Implementing the best flow-assurance solution can help increase an operator's profitability in several ways:

l Helping boost production rates and efficiencies
l Extend the useful operating lives of flowline and pipeline systems components
l Reduce downtime, pumping costs, safety risks, and maintenance.

Benefits of integrated services
The key upfront advantages of bringing a flow-assurance problem to SureStream® Flow Assurance Services are improved choice of solutions and greater ease of contracting for services.

Due to the wide range of flow-assurance technologies available through SureStream® Flow Assurance Services—including analytical and engineering assessments, chemical cleaning, mechanical cleaning, thermal treatments, and intrusive intervention techniques, a producer or pipeline operator can have confidence that the alliance will not favor any particular flow-assurance solution. Rather, the alliance will select from among the combined analytical and modeling capabilities of its members to determine the nature, extent and location of a flow blockage, and, in turn, gain a solid understanding of the dynamic thermal and hydraulic forces involved.

To achieve a thorough understanding of why a problem has occurred in the first place-as opposed to just one or two components of the problem-SureStream® Flow Assurance Services frequently takes samples of the wax, scale, or hydrate material blocking the flow line or pipeline. Defining the composition of the material is helpful in determining the best method (s) for removing the blockage and conditioning the line to help prevent a recurrence of the problem.

SureStream® Flow Assurance Services' robust analytical approach to characterizing flow-assurance problems may confirm that a client already is using the best technological option available to solve a specific problem. More importantly, analysis can determine whether an existing flow-assurance strategy can be modified to improve its effectiveness, or if an entirely new solution or treatment process might achieve even better results.

Even more significantly, rather than having to sign and manage a number of contracts to address and solve a single flow assurance problem-for example, contracting with a modeling company to do modeling, an analytical laboratory for problem analysis, a chemical supplier for chemical inhibitors, or a pigging supplier for a pigging remediation and maintenance strategy—a producer or pipeline operator can save considerable time, effort and expense by contracting once, with any member of the alliance, for seamless access to any of the flow-assurance products and services offered by any SureStream® Flow Assurance Services support company.

Three arms of flow assurance
SureStream® Flow Assurance Services’ comprehensive flow-assurance products and services may be organized into three groups:

l Assessment and consultative services
l Remediation
l Maintenance and support services.

Assessment and consultative services include such capabilities as analytical services, engineering assessment, pipeline pig performance analysis, pipeline fingerprinting, and pipeline and phase flow assessment.

Remediation services include chemical cleaning, mechanical cleaning, thermal treatments, and intrusive intervention.

Maintenance and support services include decommissioning and commissioning support, pig tracking, system monitoring, and training.

The SureStream® Flow Assurance Services alliance can sample and analyze crude oil, natural gas, and water;
evaluate wax, scale, asphaltene, and gas hydrates; assess flowline and pipeline system materials, seals, and chemical compatibility; screen chemical inhibitors and solvents; and quantify the effects of corrosion and stress on system integrity.

Involvement can start with FEED (front end engineering and design), and extend to simulation studies, including pipeline mechanical modeling; finite element analysis; design and fabrication assistance, including pipe-in-pipe insulation; and selection and design of specialized utility pigs for examining and cleaning flow lines and pipelines.

Analytical methods and technologies also include dynamic pig-train motion modeling; pig disc-wear
modeling; lubrication and by-pass modeling; and pig travel and velocity excursion profiling. SureStream® Flow Assurance Services can fingerprint pipelines using, for example, caliper pigs; and it can assess pipeline phase and flow attributes by modeling system hydrodynamic and thermodynamic forces and surge pressures, or by modeling behaviors of problematic materials, such as paraffin wax.

Proprietary and specialized chemical cleaning agents and techniques include paraffin solvents and dispersants, acid-dispersion packages, asphaltene solvents, and debris transport gels.

Mechanical cleaning technology includes a variety of scraper and jetting pigs to remove deposits from pipelines and flow lines. SureStream® Flow Assurance Services can also remove wax deposits using exothermic treatments.

GoFlo® Service - award winning technology
Flow-assurance products and services allied under the SureStream® Flow Assurance Services brand provide leading-edge solutions and technologies. The alliance has the capability to implement these top-of-the-line solutions using the best available deployment methods, including pig trains, coiled tubing, or specific gel-applied technologies.

One cutting edge flow-assurance technology available exclusively through SureStream® Flow Assurance Services is an intrusive intervention system designed to remove common blocking materials, such as paraffin, wax, hydrates or scales from onshore or subsea flow lines and pipelines.

GoFlo® Flow Remediation Service, winner of Hart's Meritorious Engineering Innovation award, enables a combination of chemical, mechanical and thermal treatments to be applied to remove even the most challenging blockages and restrictions from flow-impaired lines.

When the flow of a subsea line shows signs of being restricted, operators are often reluctant to use
conventional pigging techniques because of the risk of causing a total blockage in the line. If the cause of the restriction is known, a chemical treatment program may be implemented that can result in the partial or total removal of the restriction; however, due to the low temperatures in deep water, chemical treatments sometimes can be impractical.

Where a flow path exists through a restricted flowline a number of options are available. However, once a total blockage occurs, the options for blockage remediation are limited. In the past, the option of choice to keep production flowing was to install a new flow line, while leaving the blocked line on the seabed awaiting decommissioning.

GoFlo service utilizes the combined flow-assurance capabilities of SureStream® Flow Assurance Services’ members to reinstate flow in the original blocked line in a quicker, less costly, and more environmentally acceptable manner than line replacement. Depending on flow line configuration, the service can be deployed from a specialty vessel or directly from a production facility through the riser.

A high-pressure jetting head is deployed at the end of a coiled tubing string into the restricted or blocked subsea line and positioned at the point of blockage. This enables high pressure injection of an array of chemical or thermal treatments.

SureStream® Flow Assurance Services - focused on optimizing solutions
By bringing more certainty to selecting the best flow-assurance solution, SureStream® Flow Assurance Services helps maximize production and recovery, while managing both capital investments and operating expenses, regardless of the nature, degree, or location of potential flow-assurance problems.