We all know that the most common artificial lift techniques in the oil industry are the Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP), Gas lift and Sucker rod pump. This paper will discuss the ESP's performance history in Khalda petroleum company and the experience that was gained through the past 16 years of utilizing this technique among 15 fields with capacities ranged from + 150 BFPD up to + 3,500 BFPD. Sixteen years ago, KPC conducted a comprehensive study to select the most appropriate artificial lift technique (technically & economically) to be applied in its fields which were discovered at that time (Salam, Safir & Khalda).By 1989 KPC had 27 wells which were equipped with ESP's in Salam, Safir, Khalda, Hayat & Tut fields. The ESP's lifetime of these fields didn't exceed 300 days. However, KPC's management & staff went through continuous efforts to reduce well interventions, increase pump and well uptime, improve pump operations and optimize the well production consequently reduce the cost-effective Installation and maintenance. These efforts were basically directed into two main objectives:
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Improvement of manpower qualifications and skills.
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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. Focusing on these two objectives has helped very much in improving the manpower technical skills & ESP head office & field team performance. Also identifying the reasons behind the failure of each ESP component and the remedial action. As a corrective action 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. On the other hand data acquisition system using the down hole multi-sensor helps for closely follow up 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) on time, subsequently prevent the premature failure. The results of all these efforts and others had a great impact on the ESP's lifetime of KPC fields, consequently a magnificent reduction in the cost/bbl related to ESP operations was achieved
