Background SUBPRO
About SUBPRO and the background for the Centre
Subsea production and processing technology is a key enabler for exploitation of Norwegian and international oil and gas resources. Norwegian oil companies and foreign oil companies with basis in Norway, with the strong support of Norwegian-based suppliers and manufacturing companies, have been in the forefront of developing subsea fields.
Need for new and innovative solutions
However, new and innovative solutions are still required to be able to increase the recovery from existing fields, enable developments of new and more demanding oil and gas fields and to reduce the cost and complexity of subsea field developments.
To accelerate the level of innovations within the subsea oil and gas industry, a new centre for research-based innovation (SFI) within subsea production and processing, called SUBPRO, was started up in the third quarter of 2015 – headed by NTNU. The research centre is supported by the Research Council of Norway and several major international oil companies and subsea system suppliers.
The unique feature of the SUBPRO centre is that it combines world class subsea competence and experience provided by the industry partners, with research performed by scientifically strong academic groups from the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics, and Production and Quality Engineering at NTNU.
The centre work within a wide range of areas - from fundamental research on breakage of droplets and coalescence, to gas, oil and water treatment, system control, field architecture and reliability and safety. A significant potential lies within the cross-discipline collaboration between these different research areas.
