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Oil facility
An oil facility encompasses the equipment between the oil
wells and the pipeline or other transportation system. The
purpose of an oil facility is to make the oil ready for sale to
the purchaser's standards (maximum allowable water,
salt, and other impurities). This article describes the key
equipment and functions found in an oil facility.

Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 Function of a facility
2.1 Main process
2.2 Secondary process
2.3 Auxiliary systems
3 Separation
4 Oil treating
5 Produced-water treating
6 References
7 Noteworthy papers in OnePetro
8 External links
9 See also
10 Category

Overview
Fig. 1 is a block diagram of a simple oil facility. Each of
the blocks is described here, except for gas dehydration,
which is covered in Gas Facilities.

Fig. 1—Typical oil facility.

Function of a facility

Main process
The main function of an oil facility is to:

separate the oil, gas, water, and solids

treat the oil to meet sales specifications (e.g.,
BS&W, salt content, vapor pressure)
measure and sample the oil to determine its value
deliver it to the transportation system (i.e., the
pipeline, truck, ship, or railroad car)

The gas must be treated for sales or disposal. In the past,

disposal sometimes meant flaring or venting, but now gas
that can’t be transported is usually compressed for
reinjection into the reservoir. Gas treating may involve
only separation from the liquids, or it may include
additional processes such as:

compression
dehydration
removing H2S and CO2
gas processing to condense heavier components
that can be transported as a liquid

Secondary process
In addition to processing the oil for sale, the produced
water and solids must be treated for disposal. For
produced water, treating usually includes removal of
dispersed and dissolved hydrocarbons and, in addition to
separation or oil skimming, may include:

filtration
deionization
pumping

If treating of solids is required, it may include water

washing and agitating the solids to remove the oil and
then separating the water from them.

Auxiliary systems
In addition to the process systems, auxiliary process
heating and cooling may be required. Process heat is
usually needed for oil treating.

While, if necessary, facilities can be run without electric

power, power generation and electrical systems will
usually be included for a facility that is large or complex or
for living quarters that are provided for personnel.

All facilities require safety systems, including:

safety instrumentation and shutdown system

fire and gas detection
fire-fighting equipment
a means of evacuation, such as life rafts and
escape capsules for offshore
other equipment, depending on the location and
complexity of the facility and whether it is manned

Separation
The first step in the process is separating the gas from the
liquid and the water from the oil. This is usually done in a
separator—a pressure vessel into which the wellstream
flows to allow the gas, oil, and water to separate because
of gravity. To aid separating the streams, separators may
contain:

inlet diverters
outlet vortex breakers
buckets
weirs
mist extractors

A separator may be either of the following:

two-phase: separating gas from liquids

three-phase: separating gas, oil, and water, which
are removed through three outlets

The first separator in a facility that receives fluid from the

wells is called a production, or high-pressure (HP),
separator. If the production is at high pressure, (e.g., 500
to 1,200 psig) and if the oil from the separator is put
directly into a pipeline, gas will flash as the pressure
decreases owing to friction losses in the pipeline. Gas
takes up a much larger volume than its equivalent mass
of oil, so a pipeline sized for liquid flow will be undersized
if some of the liquid flashes into gas, resulting in
excessive velocities and pressure drop. For this reason,
oil pipeline owners generally specify a maximum vapor
pressure allowed to prevent the lighter components in the
oil from flashing into gas. The process of reducing the
vapor pressure in the oil to meet oil-pipeline specifications
is called “stabilization.”

For the simplest form of stabilization, the oil is put into an

atmospheric tank for storage. This allows the gas to flash
from the liquid in the tank when the pressure is reduced to
atmospheric. This process would get the true vapor
pressure of the oil down to atmospheric, or even lower if
some heating were added in addition to the pressure
reduction, and could be used to make the oil meet
pipeline specifications for vapor pressure. The gas that
flashes in the tank must then be compressed back to the
original pressure of the separator and combined with the
separator gas.

If the oil is sent to an intermediate pressure (IP) separator

instead of going directly into an atmospheric tank, the gas
that flashes in the IP separator will be at a higher
pressure, requiring less compression horsepower. In
addition, the total amount of oil stabilized in the
atmospheric tank is greater with an intermediate
separation stage than with a single flash to atmospheric
pressure. This is because of the gas/liquid equilibrium for
the higher-pressure flash and the altered composition of
the oil that is flashing in the tank.

While there still would be gas flashed as the liquid flowed

from the IP separator to the tank, the quantity would be
much smaller than in the first case in which liquid goes
directly from the HP separator to the tank. Thus, adding a
second stage of separation has two benefits:

first, the horsepower required to compress the gas

is lower because some of the gas flashes at higher
pressure
second, more stabilized oil will be produced

If we add a third, low-pressure (LP) stage of separation,

the total liquid in the tank increases even further, with
additional gas flashing at a higher pressure, reducing
compressor horsepower. Fig. 2 shows a typical three-
stage separation with flash-gas compression. Adding
additional stages of separation and compression would
increase liquids and reduce compression horsepower
further; however, at this point, the capital cost of adding
additional separation stages is generally not worth the
small increase in hydrocarbon value.

Fig. 2—Three-stage separation.

A typical separation train might have a well producing into

an HP separator at 1,100 psig, with the oil to an IP
separator at 450 psig, an LP separator at 150 psig, and
possibly an oil treater at 50 psig (see Oil Treating) before
storage in an atmospheric tank. The separator pressures
are chosen so that the flash gas from each stage of
separation feeds into a stage of compression with
reasonable compression ratios for each stage of the
compressor. (See page: Compressors)

Oil treating
No separation is perfect, there is always some water left
in the oil. Water content can range from less than 1%
water to more than 20% water in the oil by volume. The
lower the American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity (i.e.,
the higher the molecular weight and the oil viscosity), the
less efficient the separation.

To get the last of the water out of the oil, the oil is
processed through an oil treater or a treating system, as
described in the page of Emulsion Treating. A treater is
similar to a separator, but with special features to help
separate the water from the oil. Treaters or treating
systems usually provide heat to reduce oil viscosity and
large settling sections to allow the water time to settle
from the oil, and may provide an electrostatic grid to
promote coalescing of the water droplets. Conventional
treaters usually have a front section with a heater in which
the emulsion is heated and initial separation of the “free
water” takes place. The oil then flows to a second section
of the vessel, where additional coalescence and settling
of the water droplets takes place. Gas is flashed (i.e.,
liberated) from the emulsion as the pressure is lowered
and the temperature is raised from the upstream
separator. For a conventional treater with a heater, free-
water knockout section, and settling section, the water
content in the oil can be reduced to less than 1%. An
electrostatic treater, which is a conventional treater with
an electrostatic grid in the settling section, can reduce the
water content to 0.3 to 0.5% by volume.

The contract between the oil seller, who is normally the

producer and the purchaser and who may be a pipeline
company, specifies the allowable water content and may
specify the maximum salt content in the crude oil. High
water content can make corrosion problems worse in
pipelines and other transportation systems and can cause
problems with downstream processing. High salt content,
which is caused by the salinity of the produced water left
in the oil, may cause a refining problem when the water is
boiled off in the refinery distillation unit.

The oil from the treater is usually sent into a dry oil tank,
from which it is pumped through a sales meter for custody
transfer and then into a pipeline for transportation. For
additional information, see the pages on Storage tanks
and Pumps.

Produced-water treating
As mentioned previously, separation is not perfect, and
the amount of oil left in the water from a separator is
normally between 100 and 2,000 ppm by mass. This oil
must be removed to acceptable levels before the water
can be disposed of. The regulatory requirements for oil-in-
water content for overboard water disposal vary from
place to place, and some locations do not allow any
discharge of produced water. As an example, in the Gulf
of Mexico outer continental shelf (U.S. federal waters),
producers are limited to a maximum measurement of 42
ppm for any one sample and no more than 29 ppm
average for a given month. In contrast, on shore, no
discharge of produced water is permitted. In the case in
which discharge is not permitted, produced water is
usually injected into disposal wells.

Various types of equipment for water treating are

described in the page of Water treating facilities.
Equipment types used in this case include:

water skimmers
plate coalescers
gas flotation devices
hydrocyclones

Additional equipment, including desanders and filters,

may be needed to remove solids before injection.

Hydrocyclones require a pressure drop in excess of 100

psi to work well and would usually be placed between a
separator and its water-level control valve. In addition to
removing oil from the water, hydrocyclones have a
tendency to coalesce the remaining oil droplets in the
water streams, making the droplets easier to separate
with the downstream equipment. Water skimmers use
gravity separation to remove the remaining oil from
produced water and are usually placed downstream of
separators or hydrocyclones.

A good rule of thumb is to use two types of water-treating

equipment for a gas facility and three types for an oil
facility in which the oil may be more difficult to separate.
For example, a water-treating system might consist of a
hydrocyclone, followed by a water skimmer and a gas
flotation cell.

References

Noteworthy papers in OnePetro

Use this section to list papers in OnePetro that a reader
who wants to learn more should definitely read

External links
Use this section to provide links to relevant material on
websites other than PetroWiki and OnePetro

See also
PEH:Oil_and_Gas_Processing

PEH:Water-
Treating_Facilities_in_Oil_and_Gas_Operations

Water treating facilities

Oil and gas processing

Gas facility

Storage tanks

Pumps

Emulsion Treating

Compressors

Oil and gas separators

Category
Categories:
4 Facilities design, construction, and operation NR

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This page was last modified on 6 July 2015, at 08:58.

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