Sand Management in the current oil industry trend is one of the important aspects for operators. Managing sand, be it downhole or at surface depending on economic analysis provides an optimised production with proper risk mitigation. Just like for proper hydrocarbon optimisation, accurate monitoring tools such as well test that uses separator or multiphase flow meters are being used and are evolved. Similarly, sand production monitoring is one of the key components during sand management production. Without a proper and reasonably accurate monitoring of sand being produced, it is not possible to manage. With the advent of various techniques of sand monitoring evolved in the last few decades, the industry is moving further on how to improve the new methods of monitoring or utilising the current techniques more effectively. The industry is still struggling to make significant improvements or find new methods of monitoring or more effective application of the current techniques. analogy between sand management and hydrocarbon production and the significance of the same in sand management.
Sand Production is a challenge in the oil and gas (O&G) production and this was aggravated in last decade due to depleting reservoir pressure. Malaysian brown oil fields have been in production for the last 30-40 years and are reaching their maturity. This leads to low oil production with alarmingsand counts. As a rule of thumb, the production rate would be limited to flow beyond at sand count not more than 15 pptb. As a result, few thousand barrels are locked in within the field due to this limitation and lack of efficient sand separating mechanism at the surface. The emphasis on sand management had always been on controlling the production of the sand by means of utilising various ways of active sand control methods available in the market. Typically, a producing field requires two (2) major discipline sub-surface and surface, with appropriate technical expertise to manage the operation during the life of the field. Surface Sand Management is a newly developed process and engineered system made to handle maximum amount of sand at surface by both theoretical and practical studies for sand removal capability of the existing surface system which can increase production from the well. The concept is a combination of production optimisation and risk handling ability considering all the safety and thereby defining sand limit of a platform or a Pad rather than the complete field. This includes erosion limits (from erosion rate simulation), platform sand handling capacity (desander), procedures and guidelines for sampling, calibrated sand monitoring devices and transportation modelling. Currently, static wellhead de-sander is a solution, but installed on a few wellheads with limited performance due to changes in flow regime and feed quality. Moreover, the excess pressure drop across the well head compromised well deliverability. For gas lifted wells, static well head de-sanders become obsolete when the flow conditions changed from initial design, such as different flow rates or start of slugging effect. A pilot trial of a two-stage centrifugal motorised desander also known as Dynamic Desander was proposed to overcome this challenges and a pilot was conducted in offshore platform to prove the concept. The motor driven desander provided minimal pressure drop and the accumulator at the bottom facilitated large quantity of sand separation. The continuous weigh measurement of separated sand at the outlet can be utilised to monitor the removal efficiency of the desander. The pilot trial was conducted with total of three (3) wells flowing at flow rates ranging from 500 to 1500 blpd. A separation efficiency of 80% up to 99.9% was observed with a total of 2.54T of sand separated in four days of pilot duration compared to 21 days planned earlier. Pilot trial highlighted few limitations of Dynamic Desander technology like inefficient gas handling system, malfunctioned weight indicator especially during high gas inflow and overflow of large particles into the system especially with the inflow of high concentration of sand. Considering the uniqueness of technology, these limitations can be removed by the new design with certain manufacturing changes. Dynamic Desander is a new technology and the pilot was deemed successful which able to identify a better alternative of sand separation solution compared to conventional static de-sander especially for gas lifted environment. In addition, applicable to various feed quality and well rate ranges as well as efficient sand disposal quantification. The Company is looking forward to have another trial on this Dynamic Desander after required modifications in the existing design is fulfilled.
Gas lift has been the primary artificial lift method for wells in an offshore brownfield in Malaysia for the past 30 years. However with depleting and unstable gas lift supply coupled with the increase in water production, an alternative artificial lift strategy needed to be developed. A revisit to the Field Development Plan (FDP) in 2003 has found that Electric Submersible Pump (ESP) could be the solution to overcoming the field's overwhelming dependency on gas lift. During a workover campaign in 2008, 3 ESPs were installed -marking the first production ESP in Malaysia. The ESPs have increased the well production from the gas lift baseline production and on top of that, there is a 66% additional incremental production from the re-allocation of approximately 1 MMSCFD of lift gas from the ESP wells. The success of the three ESPs has developed interest from the field operator to have more units installed.By end of 2011, a total of 5 ESPs has been installed in the field. They consisted of conventional ESPs, followed by an ESP in a pod with a Distributed Temperature Sensor (DTS) cable and a dual ESP with bypass tubing. Another 3 installations have been planned in the near future. The operator is also looking at the potential and feasibility of a rigless deployment for the ESP -either by using coiled tubing or a standard slickline service. In an offshore environment where rig cost and rig availability is of concern to well uptime and project economics, alternative ESP deployment has been seen as the next frontier of ESP technology to increase revenue. The transformation of artificial lift strategy in the field -from gas lift to ESPs -has been very progressive and profoundly significant to the operator's continual technological advancement in the industry.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.