Justification of technical and economic criteria of re-equipment wells from gas lift operation to ESP

Background. The gas lift method of production is used on offshore projects. The advantage of this method is due to the ability to provide a high time between failures of downhole equipment, which is important for offshore fields, because well workover to replace a failed downhole equipment in offshore conditions requires to use of an expensive drilling rig. But despite the advantage of this method, gas lift does not allow to achieve such low bottomhole pressures that ESP provides and, as a result, realize the potential of wells (especially in highly watered wells). As a result, the introduction of ESPs can provide lower bottom hole pressures and significantly increase the level of field production. However, the re-equipment of wells from the gas lift production method to the ESP requires additional investments for carrying out workover program.

Materials and methods. A novel approach for rapid selection wells-candidate of re-equipment from gas lift operation to ESP has been developed in this article. The method is based on using the Net Present Value — model of wells operation on offshore field.

Results. The article presents dimensionless parameter sets, which used to construct universal diagrams for searching and ranking wells-candidate for ESP running. Approbation of the developed approach is shown on the example of solving problems of justifying geological and technical operations at the field of JV Vietsovpetro. It is shown that for fields with high residual reserves developed by offshore platform with the end of their service life, it is advisable to use ESP as a method of additional recovery of reserves, increase in recovery factor and economic efficiency of development.

Conclusion. The method presented in the article is applicable both to offshore and onshore fields, taking into account the adaptation of the economic model to the conditions of a particular project.

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