(491h) A Standardization Approach for Mobile Upstream Oil and Gas Process Design

The market of mobile production units (MPU) is booming with increasing attention to offshore fields development worldwide. In order for EPC companies to meet this market demand, the conventional non-systematic design approaches should be revised for the overall design and integration of production processes.

Project schedule and redeployment issues are two major problems to consider in MPUs design. One of the advantages of MPUs is that they can be redeployed to another location when the current field is exhausted. However, there are limitations to redeployment as hydrocarbon reservoirs' characteristics vary with geographical locations, meaning, no two crudes are exactly alike. These requirements have triggered an alternative approach to manage a fast track and multi-application process design project, the so-called ?Standardized? approach. With a standardized design, it becomes beneficial to treat a group of design projects as a portfolio rather than individual projects.

In this paper, with focuses on production processes, a decision support algorithm is presented to help the designer in the selection of oil/gas process packages and the eventual detailed design of selected equipment. The conceptual process design methodology details out the factors for the processing consideration, creating a selection path to be tailored for standardized MPU design. Upon understanding the methodology, the detailed engineering consideration is presented for the benefit of the designer, to go further in-depth for the step-by-step modularized equipment design.