Production Optimization Challenges and Solutions for Heavy Oil - North Kuwait

Abstract

The demand for digital oil field solutions in artificially lifted wells is higher than ever, especially for wells producing heavy oil with high sand content and gas. A real-time supervisory control and data acquisition solution has been applied in a large-scale thermal pilot for 28 instrumented sucker rod pumping wells in North Kuwait. This paper focuses on the advantages of real-time data acquisition for identifying production-optimization candidates, improving pump performance, and minimizing down time when using intelligent alarms and an analysis engine.

Real-time surveillance provided a huge amount of information to be analyzed and discussed by well surveillance and field development teams to determine required actions based on individual well performance. Controller alarms and intelligent configurable alarms in one screen enabled early detection of unexpected/unwanted well behavior, re-investigating well potential, and taking necessary actions.

The challenge was to handle heavy oil, sand, and gas production, maintain all wells at optimum running conditions before and after steam injections, and take into consideration the effect that injections would have on nearby wells.

Recording in the database a "tracking item" for each well event enabled review and evaluation of the wells and creation of optimization reports. The daily, 24-hour surveillance of the wells resulted in observing common problems/issues on almost all wells and other individual issues for specific wells.

The following are examples of problems identified in early stages:

Detected wells with gas interference before they reached gas lock

Detected wells with high flowline pressure before flowline blockage resulted from sand production

Detected wells with standing valve and/or traveling valve leak—resulting from sand production—before the pump stuck

The availability of such a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system helped in guiding the operations team to further investigate only specific items from the field side to confirm the findings. The ability to remotely control the wells and remotely change configuration of the variable speed drive parameters enabled instant implementation and continuous production optimization. The powerful SCADA solution enabled creating short- and long-term plans and monitoring the behavior of wells while the implementation phase was executed.

For the first time in South Ratqa in North Kuwait, the smart field approach was implemented in a thermal pilot using sucker rod pumps; and the results will be used as a reference for the upcoming projects in this area. Real-time monitoring and data storage in a single database with an analysis engine provided fully automated surveillance and the capability of remotely controlling and applying required actions for production optimization.