Optimiser: automated design and optimisation of CSG and water gathering systems
Steven van Wagensveld A and Paul Garlick AFluor Australia.
The APPEA Journal 54(2) 547-547 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ13120
Published: 2014
Abstract
The capital-intensive nature of CSG upstream-gathering systems and the need to optimise the cost of the facilities in this industry place great focus on their cost optimisation by operating companies and design contractors. CSG-gathering networks present an ideal opportunity for design optimisation as they are highly branched, consisting of tens or hundreds of individual pipeline segments between nodes, with a wide range of available pipeline sizes. Determination of line sizes in these complex systems is not intuitive; analytical methods of line size selection is time consuming and cannot guarantee that the most cost-effective permutation of line sizes is selected. This extended abstract presents a software tool developed by Fluor that automates the hydraulic design of the CSG and water-gathering systems and determines the optimal set of line sizes based on capital cost for almost any network-routing configuration. Monte Carlo analysis is used to model the uncertainty associated with gas and water production rates and a genetic algorithm is implemented to determine the set of gathering system line sizes that provide the maximum gas and associated water deliverability for the minimum installed cost. This tool is both fast and robust, and has been proven through its application on a major CSG development project in eastern Australia. The tool is also highly flexible; it can be tailored to project specific requirements, conditions, and inputs; and, it can be applied to networks other than CSG with similar challenges.
Steven van Wagensveld is Director of Process Technology for Fluor Australia Energy & Chemicals. He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from Amsterdam and has 28 years experience in Process Engineering design, with a strong focus on the front end implementation of hydrocarbons projects and the development of new technologies. Steven is responsible for the application of Fluor technology know how to projects in Australia. In recent years Steven has been heavily involved in studies and front end delivery of clean energy projects and was Lead Process Engineer for the upstream scope of one of the major Australian Coal Seam Gas to LNG. |
Paul Garlick has six years’ engineering experience with oil and gas projects. He has worked on all project phases: concept development, front end engineering, detailed design and construction. Paul was a flow assurance engineer on the Santos GLNG Upstream Project, where he worked on developing CSG and water gathering system models. He was responsible for the development of the optimizer automation tool. He also worked on the gathering system optimisation with genetic-algorithms and the Monte-Carlo simulation—automated download of spatial routing data from GIS into OPTIMZER, as well as excel-based tools to optimise greenfield and brownfield systems and convert final models into a Pipelines Bill of Materials, detailed hydraulic models in PipeSim, and he has assisted in Field Development Planning to meet constraints on drilling rig availability, compressor station construction time and water treatment plant capacity, while meeting LNG plant gas demand and minimising scope cost. |
