Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Slugging occurs because of a lack of upstream pressure and is a problem especially related to mature oil field operations such as the North Sea. As an oil well ages, gases and fluids mix in the flow lines resulting in large pressure and production fluctuations, which have the potential to severely damage industry.

Conventional slug mitigation slows down oil extraction and can produce production by as much as 10 per cent. De Flow Ltd, Suffolk, Sunrise Systems, Cambridge, and Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, are working on a solution that can monitor and therefore deal with the build up of these pockets without the major losses.

“These pockets of gas and tarry liquids are a severe problem,” says David Wittingham, the project exploitation manager. They travel in pipes where the velocity of flow can be as much as 30 mph or more and can knock the end of a pipeline clean out.

“There are other solutions, but nothing that really works. This isn’t something that you can really prevent, but you can predict it and then adjust platform operation to accept it.”

The consortium’s system is initially a two year project that will look at North Sea brown fields and is being match-funded by the DTI to about £800,000. The system is already generating a lot of interest from major oil companies not only interested in the final system, but in joining the collaborative effort

It will use platform based instrumentation coupled with novel algorithms and software to manage data with the goal of timely detection and control of slugs on off-shore platforms.

The control system should be easy to install and economically competitive with revenue opportunities and benefits for the UK North Sea extraction industry and other such world-wide applications.

Initial research and development work is being undertaken at Cranfield University where their expertise is seen as a major contributor to the project and which Wittingham calls the project’s Centre of Excellence.

“Cranfield has one of the best multiphase test facilities in the world within their Processing and Systems Engineering group where they have invested a lot of time and money. It is vital that industry works with academic groups such as Cranfield because they do not have these types of test facilities.

“Oil and Gas has closed down most of its R & D and institutions such as Cranfield have filled a major gap there.”

Pera in Melton Mowbray is managing the project, which also includes Chevron North Sea Ltd, Ross Deeptech Ltd, Scandpower Petroleum Technology Ltd and Endress +Hausser Ltd.