High Production Well Operating Plant in a Traditional Design: Piping & Instrumentation Challenges

Abstract

During the exploration design phase of recent pre-salt development in Santos Basin, it was identified great potential for the production of some wells, generating great expectation by how it would perform in the production phase, above the average of 30,000 bpd. The Subsea and Topside design were developed based on this expectation and therefore, diameters were limited considering the premises of 45,000 bpd production from the well to the FPSO. As a result of first oil production the expectation not only became a reality but also was largely supersede, confirming a very high production potential of up to 65,000 bpd per well, some of which are at the world top list of highest production wells for deep and ultra-deep waters. Despite the outstanding high potential of the well, full production was then, not able to be achieved due to limitations considered in the design's premises of 45,000 bpd per well, what overcome the already great expectation. In this scenario, there was intense effort to make the real production potential of the wells viable. To fit the design to the new dynamic flow conditions, a multidisciplinary technical assessment team was mobilized involving several disciplines such as: Subsea Equipment, Wells, Risers, Process, Piping, Instrumentation and Automation, in addition to Operational Safety, a non-negotiable value. After technical discussions between those different disciplines, alternative proposals were raised that could make possible a safe operation under this new challenging condition. The defined actions were implemented and currently the wells already operate on high levels of production. On the FPSO with those high production wells, due to this individual increase in the production, whose potentials exceed by 45% the design capacity, generating a significant increase in the profitability of the asset, contributing to revenues anticipation in the company's cash flow. This article presents the piping and instrumentation study to deal with a high flow velocity issue. The methodology adopted to overcome the challenges in vibration and erosion considered an unusual design approach, leading to some field test to check the effectiveness of the solution. This alternative approach allowed this increment in production rate per well piping branch.