P5:Hydrate management in practice

    This paper describes the hydrate management strategies in Statoil’s gas and oil production systems.  Hydrate management is a risk based approach allowing operations within hydrate domain when the risk for hydrate plugging is concluded to be low. This is in sharp contrast to the hydrate avoidance approach practiced by Statoil in the past.  Statoil has over 500 subsea and more than 100 subsea flowlines in operations. The hydrate management strategies take advantage of the intrinsic properties of the fluid systems, the hydrodynamics and the plugging risk related to the amount of water present in the different parts of the production systems. This approach is based on a large body of research work performed at Statoil in the past and extensive field experiences. Statoil’s current best practices in different production systems are described and relevant examples from the field operations are provided.