Pushing 30 Years Multiple Brown Fields Limits Through Artificial Lift and Facilities Improvement

Abstract

Most of the oil fields in Sarawak has already producing more than 30 years. When the fields are this old, the team is most certainly facing a lot of problems with aging equipment and facilities. Furthermore, the initial stage of platform installation was not designed to accommodate a large space for an artificial lift system. Most of these fields were designed with gas lift compressors, but because of the space limitation, the platforms can only accommodate a limited gas lift compressor capacity due to space constraints. Furthermore, in recent years, some of the fields just started with their secondary recovery i.e. water, gas injection where the fluid gradient became heavier due to GOR drop or water cut increases. With these limitations and issues, the team needs to be creative in order to prolong the fields’ life with various artificial lift. In order to push the limits, the team begins to improve gas lift distribution among gas lifted wells in the field. This is the cheapest option. Network model recommends the best distribution for each gas lifted wells. Gas lifted wells performance highly dependent on fluid weight, compressor pressure, and reservoir pressure. The change of these parameters will impact the production of these wells. Rigorous and prudent data acquisitions are important to predict performance. Some fields are equipped with pressure downhole gauges, wellhead pressure transmitters, and compressor pressure transmitters. The data collected is continuous and good enough to be used for analysis. Instead of depending on compressor capacity, a high-pressure gas well is a good option for gas lift supply. The issues are to find gas well with enough pressure and sustainability. Usually, this was done by sacrificing several barrels of oil to extract the gas. Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) is a more expensive option compared to a gas lift method. The reason is most of these fields are not designed to accommodate ESP electricity and space requirements. Some equipment needs to be improved before ESP installation. Because of this, the team were considering new technology such as Thru Tubing Electrical Submersible Pump (TTESP) for a cheaper option. With the study and implementation as per above, the fields able to prolong its production until the end of Production Sharing Contract (PSC). This proactive approach has maintained the fields’ production with The paper seeks to present on the challenges, root cause analysis and the lessons learned from the subsequent improvement activities. The lessons learned will be applicable to oil fields with similar situations to further improve the fields’ production.