An Effort to Establish Correlations between Brazilian Crude Oils Properties and Flow Assurance Related Issues

Flow assurance is a multidiscipline process involving sampling, laboratory analysis, and production and facilities engineering to ensure uninterrupted optimum well productivity. Laboratory testing provides necessary data to assess the flow assurance risk because it defines phase behavior and the properties of the waxes, asphaltenes, emulsions and hydrates known to be principal causes of flow problems. In deep- and ultra-deepwaters scenarios the precipitation, deposition, and gelling of organic solids in hydrocarbon fluids constitute critical production concerns. Understanding the crude oil behavior can help to avoid high costs resulting from production reductions or stoppages or, conversely, from system overdesign. This paper shows an effort to establish correlations between Brazilian crude oils properties and flow assurance related issues.