The upstream oil and gas process

The oil and gas process is the process equipment that takes the product from the wellhead manifolds and delivers stabilized marketable products, in the form of crude oil, condensates or gas. Components of the process also exist to test products and clean waste products such as produced water.

An example process for the Statoil Njord floater.This is a medium-size platform with one production train and a production of 40-45,000 bpd of actual production after the separation of water and gas. The associated gas and water are used for onboard power generation and gas reinjection. There is only one separation and gas compression train. The water is treated and released (it could also have been reinjected). This process is quite representative of hundreds of similar sized installations, and only one more complete gas treatment train for gas export is missing to form a complete gas production facility. Currently, Njord sends the oil via a short pipeline to a nearby storage floater. On gravity base platforms, floating production and storage operations (FPSO) and onshore plants, storage a part of the main installation if the oil is not piped out directly.

A large number of connections to chemicals, flares, etc., are also shown. These systems will be described separately.