This paper will discuss the ESP's performance history in Khalda and the experience that was gained through the past 15 years of utilizing this technique among 14 fields. Till the year 1989, the ESP's lifetime of Khalda fields didn't exceed 300 days. However Khalda's management & staff went through continuous efforts to increase the lifetime and consequently reduce wells downtime and the associated costs. These efforts were basically directed into two main objectives:
- –
Improvement of manpower qualifications and skills.
- –
Equipment selection & integration.
For the manpower, an intensive training program was developed including classroom & on job training, abroad training, and the utilization of the training facilities that existed in some of the sister companies.
For the equipment, during the first five years of the utilization of ESP's, Khalda's staff was able to establish comprehensive data base program that include but not limited to the reservoir & fluid characteristics, equipment specifications, well bore condition, equipment failure analysis program and equipment performance evaluation.
To overcome the bad effect of the free gas percentage into pump due to reservoir depletion, Khalda has studied the problem and used the new ESP technology device that has the capability to handle a huge amount of gas up to 40% free gas into the pump. Also, with increasing the percentage of the produced water it was observed increase in corrosion rate in the production tubing and the carbon steel ESP component, so a corrosion inhibitor program has been implemented using the Round cable with injection tube in addition using 9% chrome ESP equipment in the problematic wells. In addition, data acquisition system using the downhole multi-sensor helps for closely monitoring the ESP performance through the down hole operating parameter such as Pump intake pressure, Motor temperature, Pump discharge pressure, etc and take the corrective action(s), subsequently prevent the premature failure.
