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Over the last decade, a number of subsea solutions have been deployed to unlock the commerciality of deepwater fields and increase the overall recovery factor of the reservoirs. Numerous types of monitoring and measurement technologies have been developed and installed downhole, subsea, and topside, but usually in a fragmented manner. The traditional field surveillance approach often addresses the reservoir challenges separately from issues that may affect flow in the production network or from processing facilities considerations. The value of information obtained using sensing equipment is then not fully taken advantage of, and critical information is lost due to the lack of integration. The objective of this work is to link all data collected along the fluid journey from the reservoir to the process facilties in order to optimize its production and better manage reservoir recovery. In this work, a novel integrated production management solution (IPMS) is introduced. Dedicated subsea and subsurface metering devices, advanced flow control equipment, production surveillance systems, and production optimization tools are combined to increase the understanding of the reservoir and subsea production network, maximize the value of the subsea hardware and address operational challenges to enable increased predictive flow assurance capabilities and production optimization. Bridging the gap from abstract measurement values to production management decisions, such as inflow control actuation; allow a better reservoir management implementation along of the field life, leading to an increased recovery. The functionality of the system is designed to address a number of challenges, including the following:reservoir management—recovery increase by combining continuous downhole sensing, seabed data, and IPMSEquipement centric monitoring and predictive maitenancethermal management—increase in system no-touch time and improved system preservationhydrate management—opex savings in regards to hydrate inhibitor injection and regenerationliquid management—avoiding unexpected shutdowns due to liquid surgespigging optimization—potential for reduced production losses during pigging operation and reduced pigging frequencylow temperature management—material integrity and hydrate preventioncorrosion and scale inhibition optimization—completion, subsea production system (SPS), and pipeline integrityerosion monitoring—SPSs and pipeline integrity. For the first time, integrated production data are used in online pore-to-process integrated models to guide reservoir decisions, optimize opex, and enhance recovery. Specific examples such as detection of reservoir property changes and their impact on recovery, optimized inorganic scale, and hydrates management based on integrated downhole seabed and process data are discussed in detail.

The droplet size distribution (DSD) of unstable water/oil dispersions has been studied with a new technique. The technique is based on a fast dilution of the dispersion injected into an analysis vessel where the DSD is analyzed with a video camera and a image analyzing tool. Dispersions generated with no pressure drop in the flow rig were compared to those generated with a pressure drop over a needle valve. The latter dispersion showed a much narrower DSD and a lower average droplet diameter. The results are from preliminary experiments in order to evaluate the method.

With increased interest in underbalanced drilling, including coiled tubing drilling, the importance of realistic inflow predictions and the potential for formation evaluation based on rate measurements is also receiving increased attention. This paper addresses these points by introducing new models for inflow predictions at various levels of complexity and accuracy for spreadsheet and calculator applications. The methods can handle both homogeneous and layered reservoirs, and essentially traps the expected formation response within a narrow range based on drilling speed and the ratio of vertical to horizontal permeability.