Subsea Integrity Management is defined as the management of a subsea system or asset to ensure that it delivers the design requirements while not adversely affecting life or the health of the environment throughout the required life of the field

A drying campaign is crucial to the commissioning of every natural gas pipeline. When done correctly, effectively and efficiently, the results can prevent hydrate formation during start up and also protect the ongoing integrity of the pipeline.

Leak testing, commonly confused with hydrostatic testing, is a means of verifying the quality of facility construction.

Corrosion in field conditions can be extremely slow, thus accelerated test methods have been designed to enable evaluation and prediction of long-term corrosion behavior. In general, corrosion testing is conducted by exposing small samples of a material to the desired environment for a relatively short period of time, then evaluating the type and severity of corrosion in order to select materials or chemicals that will maximize the life of the part in question.

Control Systems Part 3: Rules for Tuning Loops Prior to Startup

This is part two of the GATEKEEPER series on control systems tuning. To effectively tune a control loop, there needs to be an understanding about the dynamics of the system.

This series of GATEKEEPERS will provide methods for using readily available process design data for determining effective tuning parameters before startup.

Proper sizing of the flowlines and risers coupled with optimal choking and gas-lift will greatly reduce the risk of slugging and help in efficient management of slugs throughout the life of the field.

Paraffin precipitation and deposition in flowlines and pipelines is an issue impacting the development of deepwater subsea hydrocarbon reservoirs.

While one test cannot give comprehensive results, a combination of testing including genetic testing will be able to provide a more reliable and complete picture of the bacteria in the system than the use of MPN alone.

In this paper, the most commonly used In-Line Inspection (ILI) techniques, methodology and limitations applicable to detecting metal loss and wall thickness measurements are presented.

This paper is the first part of a two part series and presents an overview of pig selection criteria for cleaning and maintenance of the pipelines, and covers high level guidance on establishing a progressive pigging strategy.

This article compares the common approaches to specifying chemical cleanliness and subsequently presents high-level guidance that can be used to select appropriate quality control criteria for those chemicals deployed through long-distance umbilicals to subsea and sub-surface injection locations

As TOL corrosion occurs in wet gas lines operated in stratified flow, the corrosion inhibitor or other corrosion protection chemicals such as mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) injected into the system remain at the bottom of the line and are not able to protect the top of the line.

The objective of this article is to summarize the main requirements of the permit, identify changes from the previous permit, and call out edits between the draft and final issue of the permit as these pertain to the discharge of produced waters and other treated waters from offshore production and water injection facilities.

Studies suggest that humans conducting simple, mundane tasks make an error roughly 1% of the time. Error rates for complex tasks are much higher. Some procedures are more error-prone than others. It is incumbent upon us to write procedures that are not only accurate, but that are likely to be implemented without error.

It is frequently necessary to displace the contents of a pipeline or umbilical tube (fluid B) with another fluid (fluid A). If we don’t use a pig to separate the liquids, there will be mixing at the interface (axial mixing). The mixing zone requires us to overflush the line to effectively remove fluid B from the line.

Commissioning personnel have a different understanding of HSE and safety of working around live equipment. Construction sites are typically not set-up to operate a permit to work system for dynamic testing of equipment such as energizing electrical systems.

Asphaltenes are large, complex organic components present in the oil phase, along with resins, aromatic hydrocarbons, and alkanes (saturated hydrocarbons). Resins play an important role in stabilizing asphaltenes in crude oil. When the resins get destabilized, (under unfavorable pressure-temperature conditions) asphaltenes can agglomerate and deposit.