Richards

Well hello again, devoted subscribers! Just where has this year gone? The older you get, the faster time seems to go. It is scary! Winter is nearly here. It is getting cold in Aberdeen with a light snowfall last week, early November. Still, the good news is that Spring will be here again soon.

This issue completes our second year of publication, and I thank you for staying with us as we grow. We have almost a full complement of papers for you this issue, which is great and reflects all the hard work that our technical reviewers have done to pull this together. We are always on the lookout for new papers to publish, so if you have a suitable manuscript or paper, please send it in to SPE and we will see what we can do.

The Effects of Partial Span Coverage for Deepwater Marine Risers and Tendons With Fairings—This paper describes an interesting tank test to determine the effect that short fairings have on vortex-induced vibration, which is a common challenge for offshore vertical risers in the water column.

Smoothbore Flexible Riser for Gas Export—High-pressure gas flow through conventional flexible risers has been an issue for some time. This paper describes a new design of flexible riser for gas export that overcomes the challenges. This paper describes actual operating experience with this new design compared to the original risers.

Utilizing What We Know To Develop a New Source of Energy—This interesting paper presses the case for not re-inventing the wheel for offshore wind farms. Let us use our collective knowledge from oil and gas to help this emerging industry so it does not have to relearn what we already know. You never know—we might need a job in the future.

A New Class of “Green” Corrosion Inhibitors, Development and Application—Often, conventional corrosion inhibitors are quite toxic chemicals. Recent work highlighted by this paper shows that a new type of chemical has the desired properties of a corrosion inhibitor and yet is benign to the environment in which we live.

Options, Methods, and Costs for Offsite Commercial Disposal of Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Wastes—This is an interesting paper for those who have to deal with contaminated waste. It is generally applicable worldwide, though the costs quoted are specific to the US. Local factors for applicable elsewhere may change these costs.

Rapid and Low-Cost Methodology to Obtain an Updated Compositional Model of Produced Fluids Using Separator Discharge Data Analysis—This paper is very useful for anyone engaged in trying to simulate production facilities that are in operation, especially when recent bottomhole samples are not available, which is often the case. Even where bottomhole samples are available they are usually old, not representative, or of dubious quality.

Offshore Natural Gas Liquefaction Process and Development Issues–This is an interesting state-of-the art paper regarding LNG processes. It describes the different processes and the main factors considered during process selection. Although process efficiencies have increased over the years, the processes still require substantial quantities of energy. Is there a more efficient way to get the energy in the gas to market other than liquefaction?

I hope you enjoy this edition of SPEPFC as much as I enjoy writing these paragraphs. Please post your thoughts regarding these papers to the appropriate discussion board by way of the Discussion link found below each title on the Table of Contents page. If you have any further questions or comments, positive or negative, please feel free to contact the Executive Editor at simon.richards@ep-consult.com, and I promise to read them.