• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 2 hours GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 7 days If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 20 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 11 days Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs

Breaking News:

Hess Board Recommends Merger With Chevron

Bullish Oil & Gas Producers Remain Under-hedged

Bullish Oil & Gas Producers Remain Under-hedged

Standard Chartered sees oil and…

OPEC Remains Upbeat About Oil Demand

OPEC Remains Upbeat About Oil Demand

OPEC remains optimistic that the…

Rystad Energy

Rystad Energy

Rystad Energy is an independent energy consulting services and business intelligence provider offering global databases, strategic advisory and research products for energy companies and suppliers,…

More Info

Premium Content

Is This The Best Way For Offshore Producers To Raise Production?

Offshore Oil

The saying has it that in every crisis there is opportunity, and the oil industry is no exception, with efficiencies and targeted investments being the prime focus areas during and in the aftermath of a downturn. Very few stones remain unturned in an upstream sector that has been hit hard by successive crises, and Rystad Energy is highlighting one of the last significant untapped value creation windows – that of subsea boosting – identifying more than 200 projects globally where the technology could make an immediate impact by increasing production profitably. The report was produced utilizing our newly launched Subsea Processing Screening Tool – a dashboard that analyses the different components of subsea processing – evaluating offshore projects worldwide and identifying the best candidates for subsea boosting. We have quantified costs, profits and the potential extent of increased output that are related to applying this sparsely-used technology,

The increase in recoverable reserves for the top 100 projects, out of more than 200 projects identified where subsea boosting would be profitable, averaged 61 million barrels of oil per project, with the amount varying widely depending on the size and location of each project. For every extra barrel of oil produced due to subsea boosting, operators can expect a profit of $11.30 on average.

The average investment cost to apply the subsea boosting solution for the above projects is at about $475 million, again varying widely depending on project characteristics.

Most of the identified candidate projects, nearly 50, are located in the US. The other countries rounding out the top 10 list are Brazil, Angola, Norway, the United Kingdom, Guyana, Nigeria, Ghana, Malaysia and Suriname.

The 10 companies that operate most of these projects identified by Rystad Energy are Petrobras, ExxonMobil, Shell, Equinor, BP, Chevron, Eni, LLOG, Murphy Oil and Apache.

Subsea boosting is the most mature technology within the subsea processing toolbox, and yet, much like the other subsea processing technologies, it is not widely adopted. Framo Engineering (now OneSubsea) installed the first subsea booster pump on Shell’s Draugen platform off Norway in 1993 but since then only another 50 projects have installed boosting equipment worldwide.

Related: The Most Fragile Oil Price Rally In History

“Subsea boosting offers significant value creation, both for brownfield and greenfield developments, by reducing the wellhead backpressure at the seabed, which in turn accelerates production and increases total recoverable resources,” says Erik Vinje, analyst with Rystad Energy’s energy service team.

The project candidates deemed suitable in this analysis were identified by studying field characteristics and calculating the net present value from installing a subsea boosting system. This process considered the impact to the production profile, any increase in recoverable reserves and costs related to equipment, installation, power investments and topside modification. About 50% of the candidate projects are brownfield initiatives, where the quicker subsea boosting is applied, the larger the positive impact.

One of the main reasons for the low adoption rate seen thus far for boosting equipment relates to the reliability of these units. The operational downtime ratio of the pumps was a critical issue in the early days of subsea boosting, as any need for intervention involved expensive specialized vessels or drilling rigs to repair the unit. However, with advancing technology, the reliability of subsea units has increased in recent years.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Rystad Energy

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News