Process for the recovery of crude

Abstract

A method for the production of stabilized crude oil, the method comprising the steps of: providing a stream of crude oil; injecting steam into said stream and so stripping C3− from said stream; providing a gas stream; extracting C4+ from the gas stream, and so; producing a stream from the extracted C4+; co-mingling the stripped stream with the C4+ stream, and so; producing a stream of stabilized crude oil.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention relates to the production of crude oil, and in particular to the maximizing the recovery of stabilized crude oil from an oil and gas producing facility.BACKGROUND[0002]The current global situation of depleting crude oil reserves, escalating crude oil price, coupled with an increasing environmental awareness and legislation on the management of CO2 emissions requires more responsible development of hydrocarbon assets. To address these issues, operating companies are investigating and implementing strategies to enhance crude oil recovery by maximizing recovery of NGLs and minimizing flaring.[0003]Raw natural gas comes from predominantly two types of wells: oil wells and gas wells. Natural gas that comes from oil wells is typically termed “associated gas”. This gas can exist separate from oil in the formation (free gas), or dissolved in the crude oil (dissolved gas). Natural gas from gas wells, in which there is little or no crude oil, is terme...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0023]The process configuration and controls may be such that irrespective of the amount or proportion of crude and condensate produced, the amount of C4+ components in the stabilized product stream is maximized and the amount of C3− components minimized.

[0024]This may yield increased stabilized liquid production compared to a conventional multi-stage separation process and improved stabilized crude quality.

[0025]An advantage of the recovery of this process includes the minimization of the amount of propane and lighter molecular weight components in the stabilized crude stream, which will enable larger quantities of C4+ components to be absorbed into the crude stream and thus improve stabilized crude recovery, among others, whilst maintaining the TVP / RVP specification of the stabilized crude.

Problems solved by technology

The processes for removal of natural gas liquids are relatively complex requiring gas pretreatment facilities like CO2 removal systems and gas dehydration, NGL extraction processes like lean oil absorption or cryogenic expander processes, NGL processing and fractionation facilities like de-methanizer, de-ethanizer, de-propanizer, de-butanizer and butane splitter.

This results in facilities, where NGL extraction and processing are undertaken, being very complex with significant safety issues and requires large real estate with significant capital investment.

On many gas processing facilities, NGL recovery facilities are not installed due to economic reasons and the gas exported will contain significant quantities of C4+ components.

C4+ components, particularly LPGs (C4's) are cumbersome to handle in many cases, as they predominantly cannot be stabilized with the light condensate stream and, cannot be spiked into the export gas stream due to export gas dew point limitations.

The implementation of the above facilities to utilize associated gas requires significant capital investment which may not be economically feasible, particularly for marginal fields.

The tendency is for producers to focus on crude oil production with associated gas being more of an undesirable by-product.

However, with crude oil reserves depleting and field sizes getting smaller, economics are still not favourable for many developments to take-off without re-injecting or flaring the associated gas produced.

In addition, many marginal fields discovered are not developed as the recoverable reserves are not sufficient to make the development economically viable.

Yet another scenario is early abandonment of a field due to declining production.

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