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During a market period significantly challenged by low oil and gas prices, the industry is focusing on low CAPEX solutions and maximizing utilization of already invested infrastructure.
Subsea pumps are among the technologies that can provide an increased hydrocarbon recovery for both green-field and brown-field applications. It can be used as an effective tool to improve the economics of a field development by removing the need for other costly EOR or IOR solutions and by so, simplifying the overall production system configuration and minimizing the impact on the topside infrastructure. Subsea boosting is the key element for accelerating production with early pay back as well as for increased oil recovery. For brownfield tie back in particular it will extend the life of the field.
The efforts on subsea boosting development that has previously focused on deeper waters, higher pressures and higher temperatures, are now re-applied to supporting challenging tie-back developments.
This article will show the benefits of subsea boosting with focus on the latest development in subsea multiphase pumps where large capacity pumps are offering competitive alternatives to both earlier power limited machines, historically limited to approximately 3.5 MW, as well as to other IOR technologies such as gas lift. The paper is also touching upon the, across-industry, applied efforts to address high cost through standardization.
The article will provide an update on the latest technology developments. Highlights from the development activities of Aker Solutions newly qualified high pressure centrifugal multiphase pump will be presented, showing the main steps, including some selected results from the qualification tests.
