Solved: ESP Shutdowns and Restart Issues—Novel Pump Protection and Active 3D Dispersion System Improve ESP Performance in Multiple Wells

Abstract

Abstract In North American land unconventional completions, operators are pushing production limits to keep up with global energy demand. Uninterrupted production with minimal operational expenditures is vital to deliver a quicker return on investment, and electrical submersible pump (ESP) performance plays a critical role. Aggressive production, inadequate wellbore cleanouts, and corrosive production fluid can result in unplanned shutdowns, restart issues, and the erosion of ESP parts. This paper presents a novel pump protection system that enhances ESP run life by significantly improving restarts, actively managing corrosive chemicals, and reducing scale buildup in addition to the design, development, and field installations results. The system comprises a 3D filter, an intake control valve, a novel 3D chemical dispersion system, and a novel sand fallback protection system (SFPS) above the ESP. This paper focuses on the dispersion system and the SFPS. The 3D chemical dispersion system was developed to counter scale, paraffin, and sulfide deposition over time. This active dispersion system uses a novel injection manifold for effective downhole chemical treatment at the filter level. The SFPS was designed to ensure that the suspended solids on the ESP as a result of a shutdown, planned or unplanned, do not pose a risk to restart. The unique coil-based design vibrates with ESP pressure head, breaks down the sediments, and effectively disperses the solids back into the production fluid. The pump protection system has been installed successfully in more than 50 wells in North America. The data show that the SFPS has enabled an improvement of more than 6% in the uptime, defined as the ESP run time as a percentage of the well's total operating time. It has also resulted in a 58.9% reduction of the average time required to restart the pump following an ESP stop event. In all of the wells, the new ESP systems are still running and in one case has already exceeded the run life of the previously installed equipment that did not include an SFPS. The number of ESP stop events, particularly those resulting from particle-related overload issues, has decreased significantly, by 75.5%. Furthermore, the average amperage during pump restart has decreased by 32.5%. The use of the active chemical dispersion system ensured that various chemicals were uniformly injected downhole per the well environment, and such wells had lower scale buildup compared to those in which no system was installed. no system was installed. The novel SFPS and 3D dispersion system have been developed, qualified, and field installed, and the system designs as well as the results from more than 50 field installations are presented. The systems and the methodology are unique in design and have helped several operators in North America improve ESP pump performance and run life.