Page 26 - Handbook Of Multiphase Flow Assurance

20 1. Introduction

The 1910s saw science and engineering first applied to exploration & reservoir
management.
In the 1940s and 1950s, after the leftover military equipment and barges became avail-
able at low cost, E&P industry moved offshore; first well was drilled beyond the sight
of land.
The need for dealing with blockages emerged with petroleum production and became
more pronounced as the production moved offshore.
The paraffin deposition was observed during the early oil production in the United
States and in the Russian Empire in Baku. Petroleum was first commercially produced by
digging wells with a person inside an oil well bailing out the oil (Said, 1937). Early com-
mercial production through drilled wells started in United States and Baku. Oil in Baku
is waxy, but wax blockages were not reported because the oil was transported by barrels
and in rail cars and was at ambient temperature, while wax deposition requires cooling.
The oil was transported by wooden barrels, and later by a pipeline. The wax deposits
formed on barrels and then on pump rods. Oilfield workers noticed that that clear wax helped
heal scratches. Wax was then marketed as Petroleum Jelly or as Vaseline.
Ludvig Nobel expanded production of petroleum to provide light and energy (it was his
younger brother who invented dynamite). He also established laboratories in St. Petersburg
and in Baku for research on kerosene and transport of oil in 1880 (Economides and
Oligney, 2000).
This energy, mainly through availability of hot water and hygiene, increased the living
standards and lifespan during the 20th century. The same energy led to cheap transportation,
globalization of labor sources and a decline of many developed economies and the rise of the
developing countries.
Natural gas production has encountered formation of hydrate blockages as early as 1930s
in United States (Hammerschmidt, 1934) and 1950s USSR (Makogon, 1965). In the 1930s, nat-
ural gas production was increasing in the United States and initial blockages were reported
in gas pipelines.
By the 1950s, the petroleum industry also developed in Russia, and hydrate blockages also
took place.
It was not until the 1960s when the gas hydrates in nature were encountered. This event
led to a laboratory work in Russia, and proof of the discovery of gas hydrates in nature was
made by Prof. Yuri Makogon.
The discipline of flow assurance started to coalesce during the 1980s as offshore produc-
tion encountered phenomena such as severe slugging. Offshore production did not have the
technical ability to separate gas from oil at the well site as in onshore production. The reser-
voir fluids, including oil, gas and water, had to flow together to an offshore platform where
the multiple phases could be separated. Severe slugging occurred as liquids accumulated at
the riser base when the riser pipe diameter was too large and gas only periodically lifted the
liquids to the top of the platform. Engineers realized the need for predicting pressure drop
in multiphase flow to select the most economic pipe size for subsea production which also
allowed a stable multiphase flow.
The formulas for multiphase flow then existed only in the nuclear industry which were
used to calculate the flow of water and steam. Those correlations were adopted to calculate
the flow of oil and gas, and with more experience and lab tests, new correlations were devel-