High-Pressure Separation: New Technology in the Subsea Toolbox

Subsea production systems have come far in the more than 60 years since the first deployment in the US Gulf of Mexico, helping many countries unlock their offshore hydrocarbon riches in the years that followed. For Brazil, it was a combination of advances in subsea technologies and floating production, storage, and offloading vessel (FPSO) designs that supported the growth of its offshore oil and gas prowess. From those first forays into the Sergipe-Alagoas basin in the northeast during the 1970s, the country’s offshore oil and gas footprint has grown significantly, with today’s production from the pre-salt Campos and Santos basins—located farther from shore and in much deeper water—launching state-run oil company Petrobras to a top spot among the ranks of global producers. The ongoing development of its offshore fields will continue to boost the country’s oil and natural gas production in 2024. Since December 2022, five FPSOs have been brought online, with four installed in 2023 delivering record output. The fifth one—the FPSO Sepetiba—delivered a New Year’s Day surprise when it came online at Mero 2 oil field on 31 December 2023. HISEP, a new subsea technology currently being readied for pilot testing, could potentially ensure continued future production of the Mero field and others by capturing CO2-rich dense gases directly from the wellstream and reinjecting it into the reservoir. The technology also frees up much-needed space and reduces weight on the FPSO’s topside by moving the separation process to the seafloor. Brazil’s challenging offshore pre-salt region—first explored by Petrobras in 2005—contains estimated reserves of 30 to 40 billion BOE and comes with an extensive list of development challenges. Its Santos Basin, for example, lies in ultradeep water with hydrocarbon reservoirs located at extreme depths ranging from 5500 to 7600 m below sea level and under salt layers more than 2000 m thick. But the challenges do not end there. Managing the basin’s high gas/oil ratio (GOR) and CO2 content leaves a significant operational footprint. In OTC 29762, authors from Petrobras noted that developing the pre-salt reservoirs requires “large production facilities with complex gas processing plants that limit the oil processing and storage capacities.” In the paper presented at the 2019 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) Brasil, the authors said that the gas processing plants for some pre-salt fields with high production indexes, GOR, and CO2 content account for nearly 60% of the total FPSO topsides area. The Santos Basin is home to the Mero oil field, the country’s third-largest pre-salt field and the first under a production-sharing contract awarded to the Petrobras-led Libra Consortium. The field is considered one of the largest hydrocarbon discoveries in the past decade, covering about 320 km2 of the Libra block and with a net pay zone reaching 420 m filled with 29 °API oil and high productivity, according to Ana Luiza Neder, et al. (OTC 32784).