Gas production platforms

Gas production platform under construction in the Gulf of Thailand. (Corbis-Bettmann)... 

Figure 6.1 Gas production platform SLEIPNER in the North Sea, near the western boundary of the Norwegian continental shelf part.

Filament winding has been used to provide a protective laminate on the outside of steel pressure pipes where external corrosion can take place. An example of this use is in the protection of the splash zone of steel riser pipes used on sea based oil and gas production platforms. Here, care has to be taken in the design of such a composite structure since the coefficient of expansion of the filament wound glass wrap can be lower than that of the steel core. If such a composite structure is produced using a heat cured resin system (say 120°C cure) and then subjected to subzero temperatures... 

Note Table 2-1 is not intended to be a direct comparison between the two industries, but only an approximation of relative risk. The hazards and risks between offshore wind and offshore oil and gas are not always directly comparable. After installation, offshore wind farms are more like oil and gas production platforms and less like oil and gas drilling rigs. 

Houghton and Bucklin (1994) included an evaluation of the ICI Low Temperature Zinc Oxide Process however, the operating costs proved excessive, so only a single, low sulfur concentration case was studied. The chemical cost alone was about 40,000 per ton of sulfur removed. They concluded that practical applications of the zinc oxide process are generally limited to gases with very low sulfur content. The process may be particularly useful where space requirement is an important consideration, as on an offshore oil and gas production platform. 

Callaghan, D., and Baumgartner, W. Characterization of Residual Hydrocarbons in Produced Water Discharged from Gas Production Platforms, SPE 20881, 1990. 

Offshore oil and gas production platforms are well known for providing a particularly hostile environment for mechanical eqxiipment operation. The North... 

The oil and gas industry produces much waste material, such as scrap metal, human waste, unspent chemicals, oily sludges and radiation. All of the incoming streams to a facility such as a production platform end up somewhere, and only few of the outgoing streams are useful product. It is one of the responsibilities of the engineer to try to limit the amount of incoming material which will finally become waste material. 

Product quality is not limited to oil and gas quality certain effluent streams will also have to meet a legal specification. For example, in disposal of oil in water, the legislation in many offshore areas demands less than 40 ppm (parts per million) of oil in water for disposal into the sea. In the UK, oil production platforms are allowed to flare gas up to a legal limit. 

FPN No. 5) For further information on electrical system for hazardous (classified) locations on offshore oil and gas platforms, see Design and Installation of Electrical Systems for Offshore Production Platforms, ANSl/APl RP 14F-1991. 

In the oil and gas industry, the term abandonment generally refers to the activities undertaken to remove the structures used to sustain oil and gas production after the production is ceased. The structures range from a few tonnes of steel on the seabed to a complete platform constructed from around 30000 tonnes of steel framework. The task of removal requires extremely detailed and careful planning as well as substantial resources. Explosives are very efficient tools for cutting steel underwater and have been the preferred choice of many offshore operators for over 40 years. Also explosives offer the flexibility of a single controlled cut or multiple simultaneous cuts for remote and safe toppling of very large structures [129]. 

It is undesirable in the North Sea to have more than two product streams—crude oil, and gas--leaving the production platform. All of the components contained in the producing well stream must leave the platform, or be consumed as fuel. Depending on the well stream composition, it is possible a combination of low crude oil vapor pressure and gas hydrocarbon dewpoint specifications, with limitations in separation selectivity, may result In a third product stream of intermediate (NGL) compo-nents which cannot be put into either the oil or gas streams. As previously discussed, a separate NGL pipeline system or offshore storage and loading of NGL will be uneconomic in the North Sea, and this factor will tend to encourage development of North Sea oil pipeline systems on a high vapor pressure crude basis. 

In offshore operations, exploration wells are almost always plugged and abandoned even when they strike petroleum. Their sole function is to find oil or gas and to delineate the reservoir. The operator uses this information to pick a location for a permanent production platform from which development wells will be drilled to recover as much petroleum as economically possible. In onshore operations, however, successful exploration wells also become producers. 

Membrane technology for natural-gas separations is gaining broad acceptance and a number of major membrane-separation plants have come into operation in recent years. These include the Cakerawala production platform (CKP) that processes 700 MMScfd with a 37% C02 feed and a plant in Qadirpur, Pakistan that processes 500 MMscfd of 6.5 mole% C02 feed to 2% C02 pipeline specification [26]. Current plans are being made to double production at the CKP facility [27]. 

Aero-derivative generators are available in single nnit form for power outputs from about 8 MW up to about 25 MW. These outputs fall conveniently into the typical power outputs required in the oil and gas production industry, such as those on offshore platforms. 

It should be noted that a UPS on an important plant, such as a production platform, is in a critical situation. It must function in a very reliable manner otherwise the cost of lost oil or gas production will be very high in relation to the cost of all the components in the UPS system that are umeliable. If the umeliabihty is due to poor coordinations of protective devices then the marginal factors described above may need to be reviewed, or better still applied in the early stages of the power system design. 

The book includes summaries of the necessary theories behind the design of systems together with practical guidance on selecting most types of electrical equipment and systems that are normally encountered with offshore production platforms, drilling rigs, onshore gas plants, pipelines, liquefied natural gas plants, pipeline pumping stations, refineries and chemical plants. 

The prediction of the overpressure-time history associated with the combustion of an explosive mixture under specified conditions is the central problem of research in the loss prevention field. In the past decade, significant progress has been made in the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms involved in the complex combustion processes. Prompted by the urgency in resolving safety issues in LNG transport, offshore oil production platforms, and nuclear reactors, extensive research programs on gas... 

The total cost of material fracture is about 4% of gross domestic product in the United States and Europe (88,89). Fracture modes included in the cost estimates were stress-induced failures (tension, compression, flexure, and shear), overload, deformation, and time-dependent modes, such as fatigue, creep, SCC, and embrittlement. The environmentally assisted corrosion problem is very much involved in the maintenance of the safety and reliability of potentially dangerous engineering systems, such as nuclear power plants, fossil fuel power plants, oil and gas pipelines, oil production platforms, aircraft and aerospace technologies, chemical plants, and so on. Losses because of environmentally assisted cracking (EAC) of materials amount to many billions of dollars annually and is on the increase globally (87). 

External corrosion problems in oil and gas production are similar to those in pipelines, but the economic impact on the total cost of production is limited as the lines are shorter and smaller in diameter. Atmospheric corrosion of structures and vessels is a problem for offshore fields and those operating in marine environments. The improved quality of the protective coatings for offshore environments resulted in reduced frequency of repainting platforms and tanks. 

A large number of pressure systems in the oil and gas industry are approaching or have exceeded their original design life. Eor example, in the UK sector of the North Sea, with over 40 years of oil and gas production, over 50% of the total population of fixed platforms has exceeded the original design life, and this proportion is steadily increasing with time [1]. 

Volumes which normally contain air and are likely to receive hydrocarbons accidentally, and vice-versa, can be rendered inert. These applications concern certain parts of the wings or of the fuselages of aeroplanes, or helicopters, and offshore gas and oil production platforms. This is carried out by the introduction of small amounts of the order of about 5% by volume, of a gaseous agent such as Cp3Br (Halon 1301) into the volume to be rendered inert. 

Oil and gas exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico (3,200 platforms, 75 MODUs, 33,000 miles of pipeline, subsea production systems, wide range of support equipment), offshore California (23 production platforms,... 

Cellulosic and hemicellulosic feedstocks may be converted into 100+ chemicals, among them drop-in products but also several novel chemicals. Aside from biofuels and their precursors, they may be classified as end products, platform chemicals, monomers, and chemical intermediates (leading to a specific end-product). Some of these are already produced commercially from carbohydrates whereas others are currently petroleum or natural gas derived. Most of the chemicals described here are not produced commercially to date. 

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