Improvement of Artificial Lift Pumps Run Life with Aid of Novel New Technologies Addressing Sand Production

Abstract

Abstract The effects of uncontrolled sand production can be significant. Many fields are struggling with sand production, which can lead to reduction or complete blockage of well inflow and frequent failures of artificial lift systems such as electric submersible pumps (ESPs) and progressive cavity pumps (PCPs) and thus can have a major impact on cost and production. The currently used mechanical solutions, such as gravel packs or standalone wire wrap screens, are suboptimal because they reduce inflow area and create challenges for any optimization activities. Resins can be effective against sand production but noticeably reduce a well's productivity due to negative effect on reservoir permeability in the critical near-wellbore zone. The main objective of the work is to improve the run life of artificial lift pumps either ESP or PCP within our cluster which contains multiple fields with different production environments. As percentage during the last 5 years, the statistics of failures showed that about 50% of our failures are related to solids production which are either sand or scale which is about 70-90 wells a year. And based on the chemistry team analysis, sand is the main cause because it can act as accelerating agent for the scale formation. This paper focuses mainly on the technologies that we used beside the conventional ways and the selection criteria for each of these technologies to mitigate sand production through the pumps. In parallel, we are trialing other technologies to tackle scale. Initially we started with the actual wells performance in term of failures history and multiple backflush or pump stuck cases within one-year time spam. We took sand sample analysis in form of surface samples to measure the amount of sand produced in g/m3 of liquid and from intervention during the circulation of the fluid. We will go through the technologies details and the selection criteria that we developed for each of the technologies we used. We used so far 4 technologies which are: Sand Aid PM filter Sand Guard Cyclone The details of the technologies and the methodologies that they work by will be illustrated in the paper. There is some specific analysis done for the way to design the technology in such a way to suite the candidate of the well.