Software Simulation for Making Severe Slugging Control Strategy in Deepwater Riser

As one aspect of flow assurance considerations, severe slugging control strategy in deepwater riser is related to the safety of production system, therefore it’s of great significance to the development of deepwater oil and gas field. This paper summarizes commonly used severe slugging control methods briefly, then takes certain deepwater oil and gas field as an example to introduce the method of software simulation for making severe slugging control strategy of deepwater riser. Firstly the model is built with basic information such as pipeline route, production profile and fluid composition. Data of typical years is used to simulate flowing conditions to determine whether it’s within slugging zone. To mitigate slugging conditions, choking, gas lift and choking& gas lift combined methods are chosen and simulated based on the oil and gas field characteristics, and according to the results gas lift is suggested as the best solution. Factors such as riser type, gas injection location, and flexible riser depth are analyzed for better gas lift efficiency. Finally hydrate formation risk related to severe slugging is analyzed and the slug catcher size is checked. Based on the introduced software simulation procedure, severe slugging control strategy is made, which will be valuable for deepwater flow assurance design and study.