Innovative heating and power/control solutions for offshore wells with wax/paraffin issues (REV 0/2007)

The demand for unconventional oil has risen dramatically over the past few years, as emerging markets have continued to develop and the need for oil and oil-based products continues to accelerate. Vast reserves of this unconventional oil can be found, but it has only been recently that technology advancement and cost/payback scenarios have made it worthwhile to pursue these reserves. Of specific concern to developers when addressing these unconventional reserves are wax, paraffin and hydrate issues. Historically, these issues have been addressed through a series of technologies and processes such as hot-water injection as a power fluid; chemical-injection; hot-oiling; and/or wire-line scraping. With the current price of oil and the growing need to provide additional oil and oil-based products to the aforementioned emerging markets, it has become imperative to look at innovative ways to successfully produce these difficult reservoirs. This paper will look at this issue with specific focus on Electric Heat Tracing as the technology-solution for producing these reserves. Further, this paper will expand on the required successful implementation of topside Control & Monitoring and Power Distribution equipment of the wax-, paraffin- or hydrate-mitigating system when using Electric Heat Tracing as the primary solution.