Subsea Water Separation : A Cost-Effective Solution For Ultra Deep Water Production

V. Alary Doris Engineering France J. Falcimaigne Institut Franais du Ptrole, France.

Abstract
Subsea water separation offers several advantages for deep and ultra-deepwater production (1500 m and more). The paper presents a project of subsea unit developed in order to reduce the water cut to a maximum of 10% near well heads, before transporting the production to surface facilities. Benefits of water separation include prevention of hydrate formation, improved well productivity, reduction of back-pressure on wells, reduction of flowline size and complexity, reduction of thermal insulation requirements The components of the DIPSIS processing unit are described with emphasis on specific deep water constraints and requirements, especially the need for a high reliability.

Introduction
Offshore field developments extend now in deep and ultra deep waters, down to 2200 m below surface. In such water depths, which will be probably exceeded in the years to come, the combined effect of hydrostatic pressure and friction pressure losses produce high back pressure on the wells and limit production rates. The back-pressure issue will become even more acute for future deep-water satellite fields. Several smaller discoveries have been made between 20 km and 50 km (or beyond) from the today developments. Although significant, their size will not allow an economical stand-alone development. The production transportation to existing surface facilities over a long horizontal distance will increase pressure losses and impair potential flow assurance problems. The interest of subsea processing increases with increased water depths. Subsea processing includes today subsea separation with water re-injection and/or oil, gas or multiphase boosting. This is made possible today by many advances in development and deployment of key elements, such as multiphase pumps, multiphase meters, flow lines instrumentation, electric connectors and also in mastering flow assurance issues. The aim of the DIPSIS subsea station (Deep Integrated Production Separation and Injection System) is to separate the water from the hydrocarbons at the mudline level, as close as possible to the well heads. and to inject the water directly into a disposal well. Only a maximum of 10% residual water cut is expected downstream the station. It has been developed to be part of an anti-hydrate strategy in deep-water (1500 m or more) allowing treatment of a reasonable quantity of produced water with Low Dosage Additives. The project was initiated and developed by a group of companies involved in offshore subsea developments: Doris Engineering (project leader, in charge of engineering and co-ordination), Prosernat, Sulzer Pumps and Cybernetix, IFP and ECA. The paper discusses firstly the benefits of water separation in deep waters. Then, it highlights the main issues which must be considered to design a subsea separation station in deep water. Lastly, the proposed DIPSIS subsea separation system is described.

Benefits of water separation and injection in deep waters

The mains benefits of using subsea separation are: - Prevention of hydrate formation, - Improvement of well productivity, - Reduction of flowline network complexity, - Reduction of high efficiency insulation needs. However, it must be emphasised that subsea water separation is not all benefit : installing and operating a water separation module subsea do impact on CAPEX and OPEX. Results from several case studies end-up with an overall module CAPEX of around US$ 10-12 millions for a 45000 bpd module in 1500 meter water depth. Prevention of hydrate formation Subsea fields hydrate prevention policies are mainly based on insulation and / or fluid replacing, They require development of complex contingency procedures, significant system redundancy, or remedial systems and still the acceptance of an inherent level of risk. A continuous treatment with Low Dosage Additives (LDA) A could offer a solution to all possible shutdown scenarios. However, this solution is only economically viable when bulk produced water is low. Because it allows dropping the water cut to less than 10%, subsea separation can be used for implementing at least three different hydrate prevention strategies 1 : 1. with Kinetic Hydrate Inhibitors to increase allowable shutdown duration or save in required insulation performances, 2. with Anti-Agglomerant to completely inhibit produced water, 3. used alone to maintain natural dispersing property of the crude at low water cuts. Even with subsea separation, the cost of continuous dosing is still high. However, as shown hereafter the other advantages of subsea separation will contribute to increase the overall NPV of the field development solution. Improvement of well productivity Reducing the density of the fluid and so the back-pressure at the wellhead will increase the flowrate. Studies have shown that subsea separation allows boosting significantly individual well productivity and will therefore accelerate reservoir draining rate. For a given reserve, reducing the field life increases the NPV of the production by up to 0.2 US$/bbl. This is equivalent to a NPV discount of US$36 million for a cumulated production of 150 MMbbl. It is also possible to reduce the number of wells to be drilled. Moreover, in some cases, lowering the Wellhead Flowing Pressure (WHFP) could lead to a lower abandonment pressure and therefore an increase of the recoverable reserve. Reduction of flowline network complexity On recent deep offshore developments well clusters are connected by a pair of lines allowing pigging, flushing, scrapping or depressurisation from both sides. However for low cost field development or fields for which wax deposition is not an issue, some operators are thinking of installing a single line saving in numbers of connectors, line length and installation cost. In that case, present hydrate prevention strategies are no more applicable and subsea separation should be considered. In addition to simplicity, the savings should also take into account the additional advantage of subsea separation on insulation requirement. Reduction of flowline insulation requirement When the risk of formation of hydrates is the governing parameter for the design of the insulation system, i.e. for a non-waxy oil field, the subsea separation could waive the requirement for any insulation. All problems associated with under coating corrosion and its impact on cathodic protection level are eliminated. All problems associated with large line apparent weight and on-bottom stability are much simplified. The installation time will also be much improved. Moreover the savings

associated to replacing a ten-kilometer 8 insulated line by a single bare 10 line could be as high as $20 million. This will largely pay for the cost associated to the subsea module system. Phased development Most of the existing field development projects are based on several phases with further wells to be drilled at a later stage or other reservoirs to be tied-back to older one being operating with high water cuts. Reducing the overall liquid content in flowline allows the tieback of additional production. This would normally required laying further lines since existing ones are normally used to produced mainly water. With subsea separation, as the water cut increases, the network capacity is unchanged offering spare capacity for new development. Other advantages Among other advantages, one can list : - Reducing the size, weight and associated cost of the production water treatment unit on the topsides. - Decreasing of overall oil disposal to the sea.

Deepwater issues
Several issues must be considered when designing a subsea separation module. They have a major impact on equipment selection. These issues play an increased role directly linked to the greater water depths as compared to existing solution for lesser water depth. Process data Due to the length of flowlines, relatively high discharge pressures are required. Furthermore generally high flow rates must be processed. Both flow and pressure requirements result generally in installed powers for re-injection in the range of 1 to 2 MW (say 1,500 to 3,000 HP) and sometimes higher. Process fluctuations produce load change in rotating equipment which must be accommodated by some mean. In the case of a re-injection pump driven by an electric motor this is generally solved by speed regulation with a variable speed system. The drive system comprises frequency converters and step-up transformer located on surface. The use of a subsea step-down transformer is dictated primarily by the step-out distance. Number of installed units The choice lays in the number of units and their respective size to be installed on sea bed. The decision will be influenced by redundancy issues, drivers availability, power distribution, intervention costs and overall economics. Pressure External pressure is the static pressure of the sea water surrounding the pump module. During installation the static pressure varies from atmospheric pressure at sea level to a very high values at sea bottom (150 bar at 1,500 m or 2,175 psi at 5,000 ft). During operation variable pressure conditions are experienced at suction and within the pump. Reliability The obvious gains of using such a system depend on the reliability and maturity on the sub-systems that constitute the whole. Seabed separation modules have already been installed and operated in shallow to medium water depth. In addition, the control and operation of the module is not much different to the one of a complex subsea manifold or wellhead already installed. Finally, as for the pumps and associated power supply, based on recent seabed multiphase pumping installations, their reliability can be considered as established.

Flow hydraulic behavior One another potential problem associated with subsea separation is the impact of reduced liquid flow rate on the flow behaviour. Reducing the liquid flow rate in a line may induce hydrodynamics slugging or severe slugging. This problem shall be evaluated on a case by case basis since solutions exist to resolve these outcomes such as gas-lift in the riser or top-riser pressure throttling.

Design of the DIPSIS module

The DIPSIS module was developed to operate at the mud line level by 1500 m of water depth. Investigation on the separator design has been performed up to 3000 m of water depth without identifying technical limitation. A systematic approach to the pump module concept and design with a careful reliability and functional analysis has been followed. The emphasis has been on simplicity of the design, installation and operation procedures. Also the design incorporates as many as possible of already proven subcomponents. The key objectives are to minimise the risks inherent to greater depths and to focus on a high degree of reliability of the system. General arrangement The DIPSIS system is a modular system design to be installed in a single piece. Its apparent underwater weight is below 200 tonnes with overall dimensions LxWxH of 12x10x6.5 m (Figure 1).

SEPARATOR

PUMP S

MANIFOLD

POWER SWITCH

CONTROL SYSTEM

Figure 1 : DIPSIS Water Separation Unit - General Arrangement Main functions are segregated into five separate modules (Figure 2) : - Inlet and outlet manifolds. - Separator. - Pumps manifold and control system. - Two pump modules. Each module is designed to be easily accessible by ROV in order to retrieve critical items for maintenance. All pressure and temperature instruments are dual. Level instruments are duplicated and from two different technologies. The control system is modular and can easily be upgraded.

Each module can be retrieved and re-installed independently. They are clamped on a template designed to connect them together hydraulically and electrically and to insure structural stiffness. All pressure parts of the module are designed for the full external pressure of 150 barg (2175 psig) in 1500 m water depth, considering that the riser may be filled with gas and depressurised to atmospheric pressure. The same shall withstand an internal pressure corresponding to a Wellhead Shut In Pressure (WHSIP) of up to 270 barg (3915 psig) and a differential pressure of 120 bar (1740 psi). The pump design discharge pressure is 190 barg (2755 psig).

Figure 2 : Module Arrangement Separation principle The choice of a gravity separator has been made in order to have the most reliable design and a large available turndown without modification of internals. Its internals are selected in order to reduce risk of blockage. An inlet device is designed to improve separation of gas from liquids. The oil/water separation is performed by gravity in the horizontal section of the separator. To achieve a steady interface level management under all circumstances the separator integrates an oil buffer capacity. Processing capacities As a base case, the DIPSIS module is designed to process up to 45,000 bbl per day of fluids in order to cover the average production of a cluster of three to four wells. The design covers water cuts of 10 to 80% and Gas Oil Ratios (GOR) up to 150 Sm3 /m3. The maximum injection capacity is 80% of the design liquid flowrate or 36,000 bbl per day. The designed performances of the separator are 10% Vol. of water in oil and 0.1% Vol. of oil in water. The expected oil quality is in a range of density of 825 to 920 kg/m3 (API of 22 to 40). Oil-Water Separator For 45,000 bbl/d of fluid the separator has an external diameter of 2.46 m (8 ft) and a length of 7 m (23 ft). The oil phase retention time is 3 minutes while the water phase retention time is 5 minutes. The vessel is calculated according BS5500 Cat.1. The shell and the heads are made of high tensile strength carbon steel internally cladded with 3mm of stainless steel. For 1500 m (~5000 ft) of water depth the thickness of the shell is 80 mm (3"1/8) and the weight is 52 m tonnes. For 3000 m (9842 ft) water depth these values become respectively 160 mm (6"5/16) and 102 m tonnes. An alternate design with composite materials is presently under investigation to reduce this weight.

The oil/water interface level is measured by gamma-ray detectors and regulated by the water injection pump speed. Gamma-ray detectors give a complete cross section profile inside the separator: sand, water, emulsion and oil levels are detected. Gamma-ray detectors are of non-intrusive type and can be replaced while the separator is in operation. They are not impacted by deposition and have no moving parts. A back-up level measurement system is added to increase the availability of the overall system. A specific device based on microwave measurement is under development. The separator can also be designed to perform gas/liquid separation. Injection pumps The water injection module is composed of a vertical multistage centrifugal pump driven by a compact electrical motor (Figure 3). The pump and motor are rigidly coupled. The impellers are mounted as a back to back arrangement to minimize axial thrust and thrust bearing requirements. The bearing and the motor are lubricated by oil cooled through an external coil in contact with seawater. Changing the frequency of the power supply to the motor will allow varying the pump speed from 1800 to 3600 rpm and the rated duty of the pump is 900 kW at 3580 rpm. Special attention has been given to the sealing system (between the lubrication medium and the pumped fluid) to ensured reliable operation under all operating conditions 2. In order to increase the availability of the module two pumps are installed (i.e. one running and one in standby) powered from a single cable. Hydraulic actuators are used to operate the power switch system to select the second pump. Each pump is completely and independently retrievable. The power is supplied from the topsides main distribution system through a step down transformer, the variable frequency drive system and a step-up transformer to the subsea electrical motor at 6.6 kV.

Figure 3 : Water injection pump and electrical drive Control system As the ESD and DCS functions are carried-out by the unit located on surface, the subsea control system is dedicated to actuator operation and data acquisition only. This control system is modular and based on the TOV system developed by ECA and used on the Argo III field. The control system is made of 14 TOV which provide two instrument inputs and one solenoid for valve actuator operation. This new approach is believed to give better availability than an integrated control pod.

Valves and piping All critical valves are ball valves and to fail in safe position by spring return action. This choice is made in order to cope with an umbilical rupture and to avoid the subsea installation of a large hydraulic oil reservoir. In case of pigging or shutdown the separator will be isolated and bypassed. Chemical injection is provided upstream and downstream of the separator: anti-emulsifier and anti-scaling upstream and Low Dosage Additives or methanol downstream. Sand disposal An in-line sand jetting facility is provided inside the separator. In case of sand accumulation shown by the level monitoring, high-pressure water injection will evacuate the sand downstream of the separator and through the trunk-line up to the surface. The pressure drop required to eject the sand into the trunk-line is obtained with a venturi. In order to avoid sand accumulation the flushing shall be done on a periodic basis. Prevention of hydrate formation Up to a period of 8 h shutdown, the heat insulation of the separator is designed to maintain the temperature 6C above the hydrate dissociation curve. After this time, Low Dosage Additives or methanol will be injected upstream of and inside the separator.

Conclusions
Deep-water field development is the present frontier to oil & gas producers. The next step, developing fields with long distance tieback in 1500+ m water depth, is just ahead. They require development of complex insulation systems and redundant subsea layout. Whether these solutions will be effective to cope with all shutdown scenarios shall be demonstrated. Still, remedial systems although very expensive and hazardous are to be part of any current solution. Seabed water separation, allowing continuous inhibition of the remaining 10% water cut with Low Dosage Additives is the next step forward. The design, the performances and the reliability of the individual pieces of equipment have been validated by several programs or even tested subsea. DIPSIS concept can now be considered mature and ready to be implemented, as not only, a solution to hydrates, but also as a cost-effective alternative to current subsea architecture. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank all the partners of the DIPSIS project, especially Mr. Marchais, DORIS ENGINERING, Mrs. Rigaill, PROSERNAT, Mr. de Salis, SULZER PUMPS, Mr. Rousset, ECA, Mr. Chardard, CYBERNETIX, and Mr. Palermo, IFP. References 1 Alary V., Marchais F., Palermo T., " Subsea Water Separation and Injection : a Solution for Hydrates", Offshore Technology Conference, Paper 12017, Houston, May 2000. 2 de Salis J., "Pumps for Subsea Processing : Integration Issues", Offshore Technology Conference, Paper 12013, Houston, May 2000.