ABS has issued the ‘ABS Subsea Processing System Advisory’ to help industry evaluate subsea processing systems, providing an overview of the available technologies, maturity levels, challenges and future trends.
“Subsea processing systems are increasingly considered as a cost-effective solution for both brownfield and greenfield developments. As the industry adopts subsea boosting and other enabling subsea processing technologies, it is important to review and understand where we are with respect to these technologies,” said ABS executive vice president, Ken Richardson .
“The advisory helps review the key aspects and outlines the steps involved in developing a subsea processing system for a project. While subsea processing systems are expected to deliver high levels of operational reliability, leveraging established classification organizations’ verification and validation processes will play a critical role in providing confidence in these technologies and their integration with the overall subsea production system.”
The benefits of a subsea processing system include the potential for reducing CAPEX and OPEX associated with topside facilities, increased design flexibility, improved recovery and production rates, extended field life, reduction of flow assurance problems, debottlenecking of topside water treatment constraints and reduction of energy consumption for produced water.