Leading petroleum majors are committed to the notion that distant, complex oil and gas fields can be better exploited through use of dynamic modeling technology.

SPT Group said that absent the introduction in the 1980s of OLGA, its dynamic modeling solution, the development of complex new fields such as Ormen Lange, Snøhvit, and Shtokman could not have been realized.

Today, SPT Group, research institutes, and international oil companies are cooperating to refine OLGA, via the HORIZON project, as a next-generation tool for long-distance transport of untreated or conditioned wellstream fluids. In fact, SPT says that over the years it has committed more than US $150 million to development and maintenance of OLGA, today used in more than 250 sites worldwide.

Most recently, Chevron, ENI, ExxonMobil, Shell, and StatoilHydro have confirmed their sponsorship of the HORIZON II project. This three-year project, with estimated costs of $5.4 million, seeks to develop flow models that reduce conservatism in design and new field developments far from existing infrastructure.

Further, while the recently completed HORIZON I project addressed broader flow assurance challenges, HORIZON II will focus on long-distance gas-condensate transport and slug flow in three-phase systems.

SPT Group and the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), the primary development and research partners for HORIZON, have made the research results readily available as integrated functionality in OLGA.

Development improvements also address quality of the software code itself. The OLGA verification and improvement project (OVIP) is in its 20th year, with the purpose of improving and validating OLGA code. OVIP includes the world’s broadest collection of field data for verification of dynamic modeling of production flow. The current sixth phase has BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, StatoilHydro, Total, and Shell as partners.

Commercializing research and development (R&D) results through OLGA ensures quality and robustness of new code through extensive validation, maintenance, and support. This has proven to be a fast-track for getting R&D to the market and available to all parties faced with the challenges of flow assurance.