Case study

Field-wide ESP power optimisation

On an onshore field in Western Siberia with an ESP well stock, a field-wide optimisation was carried out: reallocating electrical power consumption between wells increased oil production without placing additional load on the treatment facility.

Optimisation target

Location
Western Siberia
Field type
Onshore field
Lift method
ESP wells
Well stock
500 wells

The problem

Starting point

Production upside was limited by the capacity of the treatment facility. The output of all wells, that is oil together with produced water, went to a treatment unit where the water was separated from the oil. The volume of liquid the unit could accept was limited.

To get more oil, the pumps could have been run at a higher speed. But they would then have consumed more electricity and lifted more liquid, including water. The unit was already operating at its limit, so the extra water would have exceeded its capacity, and the oil gain could not have been realised.

Solution

Field-wide optimisation programme

The wells in the stock differed considerably in their return. On some, additional pump power turned mostly into oil; on others, it went almost entirely into lifting water. Changing the operating point equally on all wells meant spending part of the electricity on producing water that then had to be separated at the treatment unit.

The field-wide optimisation algorithm treated the well stock as a single system. For each well, it calculated how much oil and how much water each additional kilowatt of pump power produced. Power was then moved from wells where it mostly lifted water to wells where it produced more oil. ESP speed served as the control input: it was reduced on the former and increased on the latter.

The reallocation continued until the oil gain per unit of power evened out across all wells. Total liquid production stayed within the capacity of the treatment unit, and each pump remained within its allowable operating range. As a result, the field produced more oil and less water with lower total power consumption.

The diagram illustrates the principle of field-wide power optimisation on a simplified model of a field with an ESP well stock. The number of wells and the values on the diagram are notional and do not correspond to the project data. Drag the scene to rotate it, and click a well to open its cross-section.

Result

  • +1.7%

    daily oil production (+90 t/d)

  • −175

    m³/d of produced water, reducing the load on the treatment facility

  • −1,500

    kWh/d of power consumption

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