Question

What role does the manifold and production header play in a surface facility designed for reservoir fluids production? 

Answer 1

A manifold is defined as the arrangement of piping or valves designed to control, distribute and typically monitor fluid flow. Manifolds are often configured for specific functions, such as a choke manifold used in well control operations, a frac manifold for directing treatment fluid, and a squeeze manifold used in squeeze- cementing work, A common pipe or chambeer having several lateral outlets. A production manifold is a structure containing valves and pipeworks designed to combine and produce fluid from various wells into one or two flowlines. And it plays a important role in well testing, isolation, sampling, and allocation management.

Forexample to get understand well I will explain to you with a case study

• Oil, gas and water flow from wellbore to subsea tree, thence to jumper, manifold and flowline, before finally reaching a riser that pipes it to surface for processing

• Pressurized reservoir fluid samples collected in an open hole wellbore may be analysed at surface to characterize the physical properties of the fluids

• An electrical submersible pump in a completed well propels reservoir fluids thousands of feet up to the wellhead and beyond

• Subsea trees positioned at top of each completed well contain pressure control valves and chemical injection ports and a flow line jumper carries produced fluids from each subsea tree to the manifold, which commingles production from the wells before sending through a flow line to a platform.

• A subsea booster pump, located downstream of the manifold, pumps produced fluids along the length of the flow line and up the riser to the platform’s production deck

• Umbilical lines from the platform run back to a subsea umbilical termination assembly before branching off to each wellhead and then to the manifold

• The umbilical’s supply electric and hydraulic power for wellhead or manifold control functions, and chemicals to suppress the formation of scale and hydrates in the production stream

• The umbilical lines also carry bidirectional communications and control instructions between the platform, wellhead and downhole devices.

And production header is defined as in gathering system, apipe arrangement that connects flowlines from several wellheads into a single gathering line. A header has a production and testing valves to control the flow of each well, thus directing the product fluids to production or testing vessels.

The total production of reservoir fluids from the various wells must be combined prior to passing through the treatment facilities.

The various flowlines from the individual wells are manifoilded into one or more larger diameter pipes. called production headers. Each production header then carries all or part of the total production to one of teh seperation trains, which are the first of the seperation systems. Each well must be tested periodically which involves diverting the flow to a testing system. Tgerefore each well is also connected to a test header. If the field involves wells which flow at differnt pressure, a few wells may have insufficient pressure to flow into the first stage of seperation. In this case alow pressure header is provided for these wells, which bypasses the first or high pressure separator and flows directly to a seperator operating at a lower pressure​​​​​​​.

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