Quantifying Flow Assurance Risks During Front End Engineering Design

Tuesday, April 3, 2012: 8:00 AM
Grand Ballroom D (Hilton of the Americas)
Allan Rydahl and Richard Shea, Flow Business Unit, SPT Group, Houston, TX

Engineering disciplines traditionally focus on providing the most accurate solutions based on the best available information at the time a study is undertaken. Further, it is common practice to refine and update such studies as data changes, based on changes in assumptions, decisions that are made and so forth.

This paper presents a new workflow and methodology which will extend the one data set in, one exact solution out engineering approach to a quantifiable, comprehensive risk analysis of the whole engineering solution space being investigated. Effectively, this methodology transitions the flow assurance engineering discipline from being deterministic to becoming probabilistic.

By utilizing a combination of sensitivity analysis, uncertainty analysis and optimization, it is possible to quantify the impact of input assumptions on key flow assurance decisions. This starts at a high level with the conceptual field layout and may progress into details such as field deliverability, pipeline insulation requirements and equipment sizing. The methodology has already been adapted in other engineering disciplines such as reservoir studies and long term production forecasting. It provides a consistent way of quantifying results from a comprehensive analysis of multiple data input scenarios and will lead to better results from FEED projects.


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