Brief Process roles on oil platform

The main purpose of process in oil & gas platform is refine the crude oil to a quality suitable for transportation by sub sea pipeline or oil tanker. How do they do it? by removing associated gas and formation of water within a series of production separators.

The roles of instrument is about all the gadget that install in the platform to monitor the condition like temperature, pressure, viscosity, speed flow...etc like when you do medical check up all the small gadget that measure you body weight, temperature, blood pressure in order to give an idea of you health. Similarly with the instrument at the oil platform.

You have probably heard wellhead, and what the hell is well head? Well, well head is where we manipulates the pressure to 30 bar prior the oil enter into the production header or the well test separator. Now, another touch down for you.

When we call export oil as "Dead crude" if the processing was completed at atmospheric pressure while we call it "live crude" as oil processed at a pressure slightly higher than atmospheric pressure.

So in gas process, we try to produce gas that complies with (hydrocarbon & moisture) criteria specified for subsea pipeline. Why need to do that? Why not just send to refinery plant to do the process. Well, well they say love and money make the world goes around. In this case there are 3 reason that will cost money if you ignore it.

1. corrosion
2. hydrate formation
3. the build up of condensate liquid

So if you happened to be the process guy, you are responsible to water, natural gas liquid and gas impurities such as Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2). And the process science use in the oil platform is very basic fluid dynamics to effect the separation of oil (or condensate), gas, water, and sand.