Is your Flow assurance solution fit for

purpose?
Diwakar Sinha -- TNO Science and Industry, Delft.

Flow assurance is a challenge of the oil and gas industry that is being taken more and more seriously
nowadays. There are multiple solutions offered in the oil and gas market place at the moment but are
they fit for purpose for every given situation or are customized problem specific solution the need of the
hour?

Flow assurance is defined as ensuring successful and economical flow of hydrocarbon stream from
reservoir to the point of sale. (Sloan, 2005) Flow assurance is extremely diverse, encompassing many
discrete and specialized subjects and bridging across the full gamut of engineering disciplines. Besides
network modeling and transient multiphase simulation, flow assurance involves effectively handling
many solid deposits, such as, gas hydrates, asphaltene, wax, scale, and naphthenates. Flow assurance is
most critical task during deep water energy production because of the high pressures and low
temperature involved. The financial loss from production interruption or asset damage due to flow
assurance mishap can be astronomical. What compounds the flow assurance task even further is that
these solid deposits can interact with each other and can cause catastrophic blockage formation in
pipelines and result in flow assurance failure. (Gao, 2008)

TNO’s oil and gas business unit is now being noticed as a rising star within the domain of flow control,
structural dynamics and flow assurance. The service offering that TNO provides for the oil and gas
industry is shown in the table below.

Integrity Process Production Environment Alternative

Services Instrumentat Optimization al Services Resources
ion
Installation Multiphase flow Production engineering H2S separation Biofuels
integrity: Measurement
Design,
Troubleshooting Soft sensing Flow Assurance CO2 separation Tar sands
Turbo Non intrusive Value Assessment of Noise
machinery & sensing Production Technology prevention and
acoustics troubleshooting
Testing Control of Unstable wells
Real-time production
monitoring
Advanced production control
Diagnosis and mitigation of
Production Instabilities
Hitherto TNO was recognized for its work on advising and carrying out research for the governments of
the Netherlands and the European Union. TNO is actively involved in research for 5 core areas: TNO
Science and Industry, TNO Built Environment and Geosciences, TNO Defense, Security and Safety, TNO
Quality of life, TNO Information and Communication Technology.

Fields of research include oil and gas, automotive, aviation, building and construction, process industry,
chemistry, defense, maritime, environment, health, security, safety, greenhouse horticulture, food, ICT,
medical prevention and care, pharmaceutical, transport, space, subsurface and water industries. The
strength of this diversity is that since multidisciplinary project teams can be assembled on demand to
use cross-transferable expertise accumulated in all of the above industry verticals, it provides an
opportunity to develop specialized fit for purpose solutions tailor fitted to the situation.

Flow assurance deals to a large extent with inter-fluid interactions during multiphase flow. TNO’s long
and vast experience with multiphase fluid flows has led to the development of in-house expertise that
truly understands the physics and mathematics behind the numerical and empirical models that are the
primary basis of all commercial software. Most NOC’s and IOC’s do not have access to the source code
of such software and therefore even if the technical capability to understand the mathematics exists,
they cannot help but treating the software like a black box. On the other hand smaller independent
operators do not have the technical manpower which has such vast experience and in-depth
understanding, and therefore treat commercial software as a black box. These results in deviation from
what the simulation shows to what is actually experienced in the field. It is here that TNO adds value by
being able to interpret results in a critical way, and evaluate whether the deviation in observations is
acceptable, preventable or endangering the operations. The highlights of 2 cases that substantiate TNOS
added value are briefly described below.

Case study: Water hammer analysis of North Sea oil spill

An interesting example is the case of the root cause analysis of a major oil spill that happened in the
North Sea. On December 12, 2007, the second largest oil spill in the history of Norwegian oil exploration
occurred on StatoilHydro’s Statfjord Alpha platform. The spill was caused by a snapped 20” oil off-
loading hose. On December 28, 2007 StatoilHydro invited TNO as an independent analyst to find the
reason of the incident and confirm its preliminary findings. Thorough investigations by StatoilHydro [1]
and by the Norwegian authorities [2] revealed the chain of events that led to this incident. One of the
links in this chain was the unintended fast closure of the shuttle tanker’s bow loading valve during off-
loading. This closure initiated a pressure surge in the oil off-loading system. Initially this problem was
approached by modeling it in OLGA which is the industry standard for analyzing multiphase flow.
However a second look at the results and inconsistencies pointed out to the fact that this may not
necessarily be a case of multiphase flow and that’s why the results were deviating. After further analysis
TNO concluded that the flow conditions could be safely and correctly modeled using their in-house
software called PULSIM, which is a single phase simulation tool for 1-dimensional wave propagation in
pipes. As part of the internal investigation by StatoilHydro, TNO carried out a water hammer analysis of
the entire oil off-loading system, including the off-loading hoses to the seabed and further subsea piping
up to the platform. These simulations revealed that high pressures could occur in the oil off-loading
system due to fast closure of the bow loading valve followed by multiple reflections at diameter
changes. The maximum pressures were more than 100 bar above the normal operating pressure of 10
bar. The diameter changes were introduced into the oil off-loading system to maximize the off-loading
capacity. The results of the water hammer analysis provided the missing link between the fast closure of
the valve and the damaged hose and also showed that this damage most likely occurred within 0.5
second after the closure of the valve. January 4th, 2008 TNO presented the results of its findings in a
record low time to the Norwegian Government and StatoilHydro. The Norwegian government was
satisfied with the analysis and results and appreciated TNO’s ability to deliver results so fast inspite of it
being the holiday season. Based on the results of this analysis, also other oil offloading systems are
being reinvestigated to prevent a similar incident to occur in the future. (Nennie, Korst, Lunde, &
Myklebust, 2009)

Bibliography
Gao, S. (2008). Investigation of Interactions between Gas Hydrates and Several Other Flow Assurance
Elements. Energy and Fuels , 3150-3153.

Nennie, E., Korst, H., Lunde, K., & Myklebust, R. (2009). WATER HAMMER LIKELY CAUSE OF LARGE OIL
SPILL IN NORTH SEA. Pressure Vessels and Piping Division Conference. PVP 2009. Prague, Czech Republic:
ASME.

Sloan, J. D. (2005). Coping with flow assurance. Offshore magazine , Vol 65 Issue 6.