All oil wells' production lives come to an end when the downhole pressure can no longer sustain traveling to the processing facility. Various advanced technological approaches were put into practice at several fields to extend the exploitation of fields nearing the end of their useful lives. One of which is the introduction of multiphase pumps (MPP), which is essentially a mean of adding energy to the unprocessed crude to enable the gas-oil water mixture to be transported over longer distances to the handling station without the need of prior phase separation1–6.
Many MPPs were deployed over the past years at various locations with different well characteristics in Saudi Aramco oil fields. The degree of success or failure differed from case to case depending on the well's criteria and the pump's suitability, but generally the performance didn't meet the expectations in most cases.
A MPP with twin screw technology was trial tested for a one year period at a remote manifold, with three low flowing wellhead pressure (LFWHP) wells, in a mature area. This MPP was custom designed for this particular manifold to boost production of more than 40,000 bbl/day of mixed fluid, and at a high percentage of gas volume fraction (GVF). An extensive evaluation was conducted on the MPP to test its performance and understand its response at different conditions.
The trial test has proven the high percentage of operating efficiency of this type of MPP3. An oil gain was realized from the manifold using this MPP, which improves the oil recovery and sweep in the subjected area. The MPP has proven its reliability to introduce a successful performance for specially selected LFWHP wells' applications. In addition, the MPP has further advantages in terms of piping modification requirements, maintenance ease, power consumption, compatibility with intelligent fields, monitoring operations, etc.
This paper discusses the project scope and background, MPP twin screw technology, trail test outcomes, field experience and potential future applications.
