Richards

Well, hello again to all our subscribers! I hope you're all looking forward to summer, at least in the Northern hemisphere. We’ve got some interesting papers for you today, ranging from work on field development to fundamental research. Without further ado, our papers are listed below:

SPE 112710—Integrated Method for Designing Valuable Flexibility in Oil Development Projects. This paper develops a new method for incorporating uncertainty into the conceptual design for field developments. It discusses a method for incorporating flexibility into the conceptual design to allow for uncertainty in, for example, reservoir performance. It is an interesting paper and certain to be of use to those involved in the pre-sanction project phases.

SPE 127354—Latest Concepts of Plastic-Lined Water Injection Flowlines for Deepwater Field Developments. One of the more recent developments in corrosion protection of water injection flowlines has been the use of internal plastic lining. This paper discuss the application of this technology to deepwater flowlines using a J-lay installation vessel, which until now has not been accomplished.

SPE 115612—The Cliff Head Field Development—Flow Assurance and Production Chemistry Challenges in a Marginal Field Context. This is an intriguing paper about a waxy crude offshore development in Australia. These crudes produce some interesting flow assurance challenges and it discussed the approach taken, which is a combination of heating, chemicals, and recirculating water to avoid stable emulsions.

SPE 110391—Evaluating Crystallization Risks in Liquefied-Natural-Gas (LNG) Production. The formation of solid crystals owing to trace heavy components in LNG plant feed is a known issue. There are few thermodynamic tools available that can model this at cryogenic temperatures. This paper evaluates some of these tools. This should aid design and operations engineers to avoid this issue in the future.

SPE 115342—Effects of High Oil Viscosity on Drift Velocity for Horizontal and Upward Inclined Pipes. This is a very interesting paper because, as the proportion of heavy and viscous oil production grows, it is important that we can accurately predict the performance of these systems, and this paper takes an important step in that direction.

SPE 115485—Characterization of Oil/Water Flows in Inclined Pipes. Following on the flow-assurance theme, this paper studies two-phase oil/water flow which has been studied little to date. Its purpose is to demonstrate experimentally the predictions of a previous correlation.

SPE 115610—Modeling of Inversion Point for Heavy Oil/Water Emulsion Systems. This paper involves fundamental research into oil/water emulsions, a subject which is very important when dealing with heavy or waxy crudes.

I hope you enjoy reading our selection today. We are always looking out for new papers within the remit of this journal for peer review. If you would like to submit a paper, please contact Managing Editor Chris Carpenter at ccarpenter@spe.org. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them to me; you can find my contact details on the SPE website.