Boosting hydrocarbon production through energy efficiency improvement

Till now, energy efficiency in upstream oil and gas industry has been considered as a way to achieve green-house gas emission targets set by international agreements. Very often energy efficiency has been considered almost an interference to plant operations rather than an enhancement opportunity. In this energy-intensive sector, that produces a lot of high-value hydrocarbons, energy efficiency is now considered as a tool for the improvement of hydrocarbon recovery and for production enhancement, especially for reservoir in depletion phase. This work is an example of how an energy optimization can enhance or maintain hydrocarbon production for plant in depletion phase operating in harsh climatic conditions. For the optimization of energy performance several plant upgrades are proposed: all of them are valued by the resulting production increase. As a starting point, energy efficiency in upstream oil and gas industry is briefly introduced, focusing on its drivers, major companies interventions and metric to evaluate it. After that, an overview of main upstream oil and gas processes is presented. This leads to the description of the case study and to the applications of energy efficiency and production enhancement to the plant. The first step is the definition of the plant’s needs and criticalities, both related to energy efficiency and production reduction due to harsh climatic conditions and reservoir depletion. The second step is the model of the existing plant, to evaluate future performances. The third step is the hypothesis of upgrades that can be used to satisfy the needs of the plant. Hydrocarbon production and CO2 emission reduction are improved with traditional and “new” technologies, from steam combined cycles to absorption chillers, to Organic Rankine Cycles. The fourth step is the application of energy efficiency and production metrics to an analysis of the various proposed scenarios. After that, an economic evaluation of the most efficient solutions is presented, that allows a more complete comparison of the different scenarios.