Collins

Hello and welcome to the March 2011 issue of SPE Projects, Facilities & Construction journal. PFC provides a broad range of papers that explain new and exciting topics. I hope you find these papers interesting and enlightening.

The first two papers deal with materials of construction and their use. Guidelines for Filler-Material Selection To Minimize Preferential Weld Corrosion in Pipeline Steels reviews recent field failures in light of mitigation guidelines from existing literature. This paper highlights the frequent use of inhibitors, but challenges the use of improved filler materials. Offshore-Platform Startup Challenges: Materials Integrity and Remediation highlights how stainless steels are affected by installation methods and contamination. This illustrates the need for good construction methods and quality control.

Deployment, Monitoring, and Optimization of a Scale Inhibitor and Associated Corrosion Inhibitor Within a Deepwater Subsea Facility Offshore Brazil provides lessons about typical problems found in a subsea environment, including deposition of suspended solids, hydrate formation, and incompatibility of chemicals with materials and produced fluids.

Sour Prediction of Salinity of Salty Crude Oil Using Arrhenius-Type Asymptotic Exponential Function and Vandermonde Matrix describes a tool with practical value for engineers to quickly predict the salt content in the crude oil at various conditions without the need for experimental measurements. Using Regression Analysis To Relate Safety and Environmental Outcomes to Incidence Factors demonstrates how regression analysis is a quantitative tool that provides insight into health, safety and environmental incidents that are not readily available from qualitative analysis.

The final paper, CO₂/Brine Surface Dissolution and Injection: CO₂ Storage Enhancement, is another paper that demonstrates the broad nature of our discipline. A combined chemical and reservoir engineering approach was used to define the important surface transport and subsurface interactions. Important surface features include the energy balance, location, sizing, materials specification, and costing of surface equipment for mixing and transporting CO₂ for subsurface storage.

Thank you for taking the time to review these papers. I welcome your suggestions to improve our journal. Please email me at James.N.Collins@ConocoPhillips.com. Thank you very much for your continued support and participation in the PFC journal. I’m confident you’ll enjoy the March issue.