Probabilistic estimation of hydrate formation

Hydrate formation is one of the major challenges for offshore oil and gas production and the transportation industry. The blockage of subsea pipelines and equipment due to hydrate formation imposes a potential safety hazard. To ensure continuous functionality of the production system and minimize production losses, many approaches are currently being adopted by the industry where probabilistic estimation of hydrate formation can be considered as a critical step of safety evaluation. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to predict hydrate formation probability in a subsea production and transportation system for a given composition and operating conditions. The proposed approach considers the Shortest Path of Hydrate Formation (SPHF) in predicting the probability of hydrate formation. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.