What is Flow Assurance?

The term ‘Flow Assurance’ is understood to have been first coined in the early 1990s in Portuguese as 'Garantia de Fluxo', which translates as 'Guarantee the Flow'.

The term originally covered the thermal hydraulic and production chemistry issues faced during oil and gas production.  Now, it has a much broader definition:

"Flow Assurance includes all issues important to maintaining the flow of oil & gas from reservoir to reception facilities."
Flow Assurance is a multidiscipline activity, requiring engineers with detailed technical backgrounds to "follow the flow" from reservoir through to reception.  Designing equipment to avoid a range of problems.  FEESA has developed a proven track record in providing specialised Flow Assurance design services using a range of software tools.  Over the last few years, this capability has developed through the extensive use of FEESA own software Maximus

Hydraulic Analysis

• Multiphase flow
• Pressure drop
• Deliverability - see Case Studies 2 & 3
  
  Thermal Behaviour
• Insulation
• Active heating requirements
  
  Operability Investigations
• System Warm Up
• System Cooldown - see Case Study 5
• Blowdown
• Slugging - see Case Studies 4 & 7
• Dead Oil Displacement
  
  Investigation of Potential Blockages
• Hydrates
• Wax
• Asphaltenes
• Scale
• Sand
  
  PVT & Rheology Investigation
• Phase behaviour & Characterisation
• Fluid physical properties - see Long Flowline Animation
• Non-Newtonian behaviour - see Case Study 8
• Emulsion characteristics
• Biodegradation
  
  Mechanical Integrity
• System damage (Corrosion/Erosion) - see Case Study 6
• Reliability & availability

See Case Studies showing how FEESA personnel have helped design teams address these problems or download our Flow Assurance Capability Statement (PDF, 213K)