2013 ATCE Special Sessions and Event Highlight Projects, Facilities, and Construction

The 2013 SPE ATCE to be held 30 September–2 October in New Orleans features technical and special sessions, and a dinner event spotlighting projects, facilities, and construction.

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The 2013 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) to be held 30 September–2 October in New Orleans features technical and special sessions, and a dinner event spotlighting projects, facilities, and construction (PFC).

A PFC dinner and panel session, “Determining the Basis of Design for PF&C Projects—Why Facilities Engineers Need to Think,” takes place on 30 September. The panelists are David Aron of Petroleum Development Consultants, Mark Hollar of SBM, Maurice Mullaly of WorleyParsons, and Luigi Saputelli of Frontender.

Oil and gas production is fraught with uncertainty. Reservoir properties are determined from limited information and until production starts up, only estimates are available for important design parameters, such as production flow rates, oil gravity, the gas/oil ratio, gas density, and water composition. An initial basis of design may constrain the facility design to meet specific parameters, limiting built-in flexibility to account for the reservoir uncertainties or the effects on facility capital and operating expenditures.

The panelists will discuss the effect of reservoir uncertainty from a PFC point of view, presenting reservoir engineering, operating company, and detailed design perspectives.

A ticket purchase is required for the dinner event.

On 1 October, a special session titled “Knowledge Sharing on Separator Design,” sponsored by SPE’s Separations Technology Technical Section, covers topics ranging from issues with conventional separator designs to emerging technology trends. The panelists are Robert Chin and Hans Nooijen of Shell and Mike Tienhaara of ASCOM.

“Challenges of Using CFD in Separations” will also be discussed in the special session. The panelists are Hank Rawlins of eProcess Technologies; Victor van Asperen and Sander van Woudenberg of FMC Technologies; Tienhaara; and Timothy M. Healy of XOM.

The technical sessions on 2 October are dedicated to PFC  and operations. Among the topics covered in the morning session are managing offshore megaprojects, calculation of erosion to velocity, and thermoplastic lining technology.

The afternoon session includes case studies and lessons learned about flare gas recovery, liquid entrainment, and naphthenates in crude oil production. To view the conference program, visit www.spe.org/atce/2013/