Responsible Oil Well Tests on Artificial Islands Close to Offshore Waters

Abstract

Safeguarding and restoring the normal ecosystems and environment of the Arabian Gulf in an active hydrocarbon province undergoing field development is a tough challenge. Nevertheless, a multidisciplinary team involved in this field development has maintained a profound commitment in stewarding natural resources of the major carbonate field in Saudi Arabia. As part of the Kingdom's strategy to maintain crude oil production targets, production tests were needed to confirm potential of the wells in the Southern part of the field's structure prior to commissioning. The wells are located on drill sites in some artificial islands that were reclaimed from the sea. The six-well deliverability testing campaign should greatly enhance offshore field development, help to obtain reservoir characterization parameters, evaluate stimulation needs for producers, and assess comingling concept for selected wells. A total of 27 artificial Islands and a major transportation causeway were constructed by land reclamation from offshore waters of the Arabian Gulf. These facilitate onshore access to drill sites thus eliminating relatively more expensive fixed steel jacket rigs or platforms.Due to land space limitation and well spacing constraints on the drill sites, a compact well test facility layout was specifically designed to achieve smokeless flaring, full combustion, and minimize environmental impact. The design consists of two heat exchangers, three-phase separators, i-loop systems for effective H 2 S scavenging and chemical mix with crude, surge tanks and air compressors. When deployed, this system helped to meet the test objectives and addressed space limitation challenges, mitigated risk to sea pollution in a sensitive marine environment, and forestalled uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons to the environment.The completion of the cleanup and flow back operation on these wells with no single safety incident, uncontrolled release of hydrocarbons, or spill to nearby offshore waters was a major demonstration of leadership and a key contribution to well testing in similar environments. BackgroundMeeting global demands responsibly and reliably led to the company's development of the Y field close to the shoreline of the Arabian Gulf. Developing the prolific field is a crucial element in the company's energy supply strategy with a significant increment to the anticpated production levels within afew years. Due to the shallow water location, access to offshore drilling rigs would be impossible without extensively dredging offshore channels. The access challenge was handled by handled by building a causeway that connects to a series of artificial drilling islands. The primary causeway artery has +21 km total length with an additional +20 km of laterals. The laterals form branches of 25 islands designated for crude oil production. Two of the islands are dedicated for water injection to pressurize the field. The drilling islands and causeway were created from sand dredged from the seabed and protected with huge rocks around the slopes. Ju...