Publications

There are many challenging issues toward the tail of the oil and gas production period. An integrated solution is needed considering the economics of the asset. The North Belut field, located at Block B South Natuna Sea, operated by Medco E & P Indonesia has been in operation since 2009. During the current tail of production period, one of the operations challenges is the slugging phenomenon which causes wells shut-in due to high back-pressure and sudden surge of liquid which causes process upset to the downstream facilities. The mitigation program to be implemented should be integrated with the operations strategy to maintain the production and prolong the asset life. This paper summarises the study of the multiphase flowline system at its current operations condition, the impact of lowering plant pressure to the slugging phenomena, and the prediction of slugging tendency in the remaining years of the asset life. The simulation results are based on analysis using the multiphase pipeline simulation tool OLGA with slug tracking module. The results showed that the lowering of the plant pressure can reduce the slugging tendency. However, since the gas will naturally continue to decrease in the end-of-life period, the slugging phenomenon will potentially occur again in the future. The result also shows that the multiphase pipeline behaviours can be modelled with excellent agreement between actual data and simulation results. The result is beneficial in enriching the strategy to reduce slugging in the tail of the production period.