Abstract
Oil producers sometimes perform unexpectedly below expectations. Low performance could be caused by many reasons. Formation damage inside the near wellbore region, liquid load-up, and high back pressure imposed by the production system are just some listed among the many reasons. To revive or to boost the production of under-performing wells, especially impacted by liquid load or by high back pressure, a surface jet pump provides a quick and economical way as it consumes no external energy such as electricity and contains no moving parts. The surface jet pump utilizes the pressurized fluids from a good producer to generate a suction power. The suction power created can be then used to reduce the back-pressure imposed on a weak producer sitting beside the good producer. The performance of this weak producer is therefore improved.
Presented and discussed in this paper is the brief description of working principle of a surface jet pump, factors affecting its performance, candidate well selection for the application, and a case study for one trial test of a surface jet pump in Safaniya field. Intensive well rates data along with wellhead pressure reduction over 60 days under different testing scenarios were collected, analyzed and presented to showcase the success of its application in one location of Safaniya field.
The trial test was successfully completed with positive results showing the feasibility of production boosting capacity achieved by a surface jet pump through both real production increase and reduction of back pressure imposed on the weak producers. To streamline the field implementation of the surface jet pump, and to meet the production increase expectation, some factors highlighted in the paper, which have a big impact on its outcome, must be carefully examined when choosing a candidate well for the application. Failure to consider the importance of those factors would result in no production gain at all.
