Slug Catchers in Natural Gas Production - NTNU

Karam – Slug Catchers in Natural Gas Production
5.3 Snøhvit and Melkøya
The Snøhvit field is located in the 7120 and 7121 blocks of the Barents Sea at a 140 km distance from
shore. The development of this field was the first in the Barents Sea. Several challenges were faced
throughout the process especially regarding the operation in a remote area. The reservoir, which is at a
2400 meters depth, is underlying a water depth ranging from 250 to 340 meters. No platform of any
kind was used for operations and production, a subsea production facility was used instead (Statoil,
2012).
The gas is transported from the reservoir to Melkøya through a 143 km long, 26.8 inches pipeline. The
route followed by the pipeline is quite rough which will cause numerous production problems such as
slug formation. The elevation profile versus the length of the pipe should be determined. The cold
water of the Barents Sea and low temperatures at the sea floor can cause some flow assurance
problems as well. Therefore, these specifics have to be accounted for in the design. Inhibitors such as
MEG are also be added to the system to reduce the effect of these two previously stated factors.
The Melkøya island, represented in Figure 13 with all its components, receives the gas from two other
different fields, the Albatross and the Askeladd fields also located in the Barents Sea. The products
generated are LNG, LPG and condensate. This made of Hammerfest the first land based LNG plant.
The gas produced is then shipped to some further treating terminal facilities in Bilboa, Huelva and
Cove point before being distributed to the European and American markets. LNG tankers are used to
transport the gas instead of the pipelines due to the location of the field and the processing plant with
respect to the targeted markets (Pettersen J. , 2006).
5.4 Ormen Lange and Nyhamna
The Ormen Lange field located in the blocks 6305/4, 5, 7 and 8, 121 km north-west of the Møre coast
in mid-Norway, is the second largest gas field in the Norwegian Sea (Statoil, 2012). Some
geographical patterns of the area such as the well-known Storegga Slide made the transport of gas to
shore challenging, especially that the field is lying within this area and close to the steep upper
headwall. The latter has a slope ranging from 25 to 30 degrees and goes from 250 meters of water
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