North Kuwait Sabriyah wells have massive formation damage and enormous fluid losses occurring during workover operations in the Upper Burgan Formation. This challenge causes wellbore plugging, as well as incremental operational costs (rig days & brine cost) and delayed production. It is noteworthy that the Upper Burgan (UB) Formation is balanced with 5.5 PPG kill fluid. This is due to the significant differential pore pressure and 8.4 PPG brackish water, which would impose a high risk of losses and formation damage. A unique solution" salt pill" has been selected as an optimum solution to this challenge. The solution is a filtration control agent that allows work over activity with temperature stability up to 350 Deg. F and it is applicable for Gas & Oil wells with over 2% water cut. It is sustained casing pressure for workover with a constant fluid level at surface during the intervention. The customized fluid is being flowed back and it is 100% dissolvable in produced or any under saturated water, with no need for acid breaker. This unique feature allows to keep the formation up to 5000 Psi overbalance thus eliminating potential well control issues by maintaining the static fluid level in the well. This salt pill technology was successfully tested in the candidate Sabriyah wells, the results were satisfactory & the trail has shown good success. The well was put back to the original rate, and oil showed at surface after unloading only one well volume. This successful pilot will be a best practice solution for KOC assets in term of cost optimization and added value. The technology will support KOC to solve some of the other faced challenges in various wells integrity and WO issues demonstrating how much cost savings can be attained along with keeping the reservoir damage free and restoring its productivity to original levels after the Salt Pill technology has been deployed.
The strategy of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is to implement key/emerging technologies at a country wide scale to meet future oil demand and production targets as planned in KPC 2040 strategy through overcome the field's challenges. KOC's Optimization strategy focuses on: Increased and optimize oil production from production optimizations Extension of field life Production interruption associated with pressure build up in reservoir, wellbore and flow lines have observed among many wells in West Kuwait fields perforated in Upper Burgan formation, which has a great impact on the company strategy. Tight emulsion phenomena is consider one the most challenging problems in West Kuwait wells due to the nature of asphaltenic crudes and high water cut production percentage. Traditional approaches to reduce high pressure and break the emulsion phase through injecting chemical near wellhead or in annuls is usually not successful in most cases and require large amount of chemical. Due to the complexity of this issue, a novel approach was used in this study to identify the main causes of oil production reduction and overcome the challenge to maximize oil production in West Kuwait fields.
Meeting 2040 KPC Strategic plan objectives and KOC production targets will require adoption of new cost-effective technologies and methods in Kuwait fields, resulting in incremental oil production and extended life of the fields. Long-term oil production through artificial lift application can lead to pressure depletion and water cut incremental in mature fields, which can cause obvious wellbore impairments, particularly in medium to week formations such as Wara and Upper Burgan formations. One of the critical parameters that will have great influence on maturing this strategy is sand management-field development. Recently some of high producing wells perforated in Wara sandstone Formation in the Greater Burgan field in Kuwait have been plugged due to sand production issues. Understanding the causes of this critical challenge will definitely help KOC in finding the optimum sand management work flow and select the right sand control technologies to maximize the oil production in Wara formation. Several sand characterization tests were conducted on core plugs and produced samples collected downhole, ESP wellbore data was linked with well logs analysis and production data for understanding the sand production phenomena within the intervals and help establish a sand collapse model. Based on the lab work, modeling and ESP real time data, a screening benchmark was developed for sand management and control for Wara formation. The unique customized screening criteria will support South East Kuwait (SEK) field development to identify/avoid the potential sanding intervals and sustain oil production at safe drawdown pressure, which definitely will prevent ESP failures and extend the ESP lifetime. The risk assessment for potential sanding intervals has been established to predict sand production in most new Wara wells. Some Wara wells targeting shallower or weaker sands would normally be sand control candidates, by taking into account the completion design, optimizing surface sand management workflow, managing safe drawdown and BHFP levels, and taking advantage of favorable stress vectors through oriented perforation can encompass the sand free well operating envelopes over life of well production and depletion conditions.
Kuwait is in the process of developing the deeper heavier oil reservoirs as part of Kuwait's national oil production strategy and KPC strategy 2040. This is in order to increase the oil production capacity for the next decade. The enhanced recovery of heavy oil assets needs a high level of expertise, optimum technologies and techniques, which are tailored to the distinctive challenges of the reservoirs and performed in a cost effective manner to optimize output and maximize economic benefits and rate of returns. Several wells are perforated in the zones of interest of the reservoir within the study area, which is currently under production using Progressing Cavity Pumps and is under natural production phase. The low productivity oil producers are completed in the Burgan reservoir. This reservoir is characterized by very high viscous crude oil around 15,000 cp, with a low gas-oil ratio (10-30) and with little or no primary drive mechanisms. The project requires overcoming certain challenges the following challenges are identified as the key challenges: Limited fluid mobility which is due to the high viscosity of the oil. Absence of drive support associated with the dissolved gas, the depth of the well, and the oil and its compositional gradient reservoir. Non-thermal well completion of the well, and the perforation design policy that was implemented. Lack of fluid/rock characterization and being in an oil-wet system. In the design of this project, the suggested method to be used is a non-thermal optimization process "chemical treatment ". The chemical treatment will be implemented as the chosen technology for a well that ceased producing in 2009. This method which has been applied globally and has also been proven to have less impact on the environment as per KOC HSE policy. The selected environmentally friendly method has three important mechanisms, which are as follows: Acts as a Wettability alteration agent. Acts as a Viscosity reducer agent. Acts as an Asphaltene inhibitor agent. KOC successfully conducted a pilot in 2016 and after the well was put back on to the production phase an increase of 300 bbl/day (net oil) was attained. The return of investment (ROI) of this pilot was a key economic calculation in answering the economic benefits of this procedure and in validating the project. As well showing the economic benefits of the projects value and its impact on the margin. The return of investment (ROI) was captured within day of production, with the total profit for the first 34 days was 438,885.52 USD.
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