HOUSTON, TEXAS, Nov 10, '24 — The 2025 OTC committee has accepted an abstract submitted by Occidental (NYSE: OXY) and MicroSilicon for presentation at its annual conference in May 2025. The paper will detail the installation and value provided by the Quantum RF* Asphaltene Analyzer (QRF) for the K2 field in the Gulf of Mexico. The QRF was deployed on the Marco Polo platform in 2022 and the paper describes how the QRF technology originally deployed in for Middle East asphaltene surveillance was adapted for Offshore GOM Oil and Gas Production. The text of the abstract is below:

Asphaltene surveillance has recently been introduced in the Middle East to monitor and improve chemical treatment programs applied to production systems that are prone to asphaltene deposition and blockages. Real-time data has made it clear that asphaltene content within a production stream is a dynamic variable that can vary with flow regime and other aspects of production. This paper presents results from the world’s first offshore deployment of that technology, including proof of concept, qualification, offshore deployment, calibration, and surveillance effectiveness over an 18-month period.

Asphaltenes are high molecular weight, polar and paramagnetic hydrocarbons responsible for significant blockages and downtime. Often, chemical programs are used to manage fouling but it may prove difficult to determine the effectiveness and that makes optimization challenging. A newly introduced surveillance technique measures the total amount of asphaltene by quantifying its paramagnetic signature and that technology was considered attractive for offshore. Commissioning of the sensor for its first ever offshore operation was non-trivial and required an integrated partnership between the operator and sensor provider, with particular emphasis on data integration, component qualification and ease of maintenance.

A review of a few GOM oils established that, as had been previously seen in the Middle East, the paramagnetic signature consistently correlated with asphaltene content. This gave confidence to use the signature as a potential input for offshore production decisions. One new challenge for the offshore analysis, however, was that multiple wells on the seabed were commingled to two risers coming to the surface and the asphaltene sensor was plumbed to only one of those risers. To meet this challenge, it proved very beneficial to be able to integrate the asphaltene data with other real-time data traditionally available to the operator, such as well alignments. The integrated results were then viewable on a dedicated vendor dashboard as well as on the operator’s SEEQ dashboard.

A systematic sampling program was launched so that SARA data could be used to compare against the real-time data. The range of experiments to date include evaluating effectiveness of long-term solvent soaks, monitoring for change in baseline due to changes in chemicals or changes in subsea configuration and observing elative differences in asphaltene content influenced by continuous chemical treatments and the asphaltene stability of fluids from zonal production.

This paper demonstrates additional value that can be obtained from getting that data in real-time, especially when viewed in the context of an overall chemical management program. Similarities seen with real-time asphaltene behavior related to Middle Eastern and Gulf of Mexico crudes suggest that some behavioral aspects of asphaltene deposition need not be dependent on regional differences that may influence some other oil characteristics.