Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - corrosion

Deepwater flow assurance should always be considered from an integrated standpoint, taking into account the well, reservoir, and production angles to make sure the full range of fluid scenarios and compositions are examined, and to avoid costly resampling and re-evaluation after systems are built. Production fluids interact with the reservoir, well, pipeline, surface facilities, and the environment. All these impact flow assurance, leading to potential issues with hydrates, wax, asphaltenes, scales, slugging, emulsion, foam, sand, and corrosion. Deepwater flow assurance requires a full understanding of these interactions and a multi-disciplinary approach to managing them. Modern simulation software allows such an approach to be integrated efficiently into asset team workflows.

Deepwater O&G pipelines, used to transport oil and gas from offshore production units to onshore refineries, are subjected to the corrosive effects of salt water and to massive internal and external pressures. The risk of structural collapse in a pipeline is largely dependent on the levels of internal and external corrosion affecting pipe sections and on the amount of internal and external pressure on the pipe. Corrosion is a time dependent phenomenon that usually requires several years to produce a corrosion defect sufficiently large to cause a significant reduction in the collapse pressure of a pipeline. Consequently during installation it is considered that the pipeline is free of any metal loss due to corrosion.