Page 10 - Oil and Gas Production Handbook An Introduction to Oil and Gas Production

Today oil and gas is produced in almost every part of the world, from the
small 100 barrels a day private wells, to the large bore 4000 barrel a day
wells; in shallow 20 meter deep reservoirs to 3000 meter deep wells in more
than 2000 meters of water; in 10,000 dollar onshore wells to 10 billion dollar
offshore developments. Despite this range many parts of the process are
quite similar in principle.

At the left side, we find the wellheads. They feed into production and test
manifolds. In a distributed production system this would be called the
gathering system. The remainder of the diagram is the actual process, often
called the Gas Oil Separation Plant (GOSP). While there are oil or gas only
installations, more often the well-stream will consist of a full range of
hydrocarbons from gas (methane, butane, propane etc.), condensates
(medium density hydrocarbons) to crude oil. With this well flow we will also
get a variety of unwanted components such as water, carbon dioxide, salts,
sulfur and sand. The purpose of the GOSP is to process the well flow into
clean marketable products: oil, natural gas or condensates. Also included
are a number of utility systems, not part of the actual process, but providing
energy, water, air or some other utility to the plant.

2.1 Facilities

Figure 2. Oil and gas production facilities

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