Water handling at the PF14 Jul 2018 12:31
A lot of nonsense has been posted, here but mostly on the Advfn board, by a certain poster who gets most of his knowledge by Googling process terms. This is the same poster (posting under multiple identities) who claims also to know that ESPs can be obtained "off the shelf".
I know a lot about the O&G Industry, having worked in it for years in N. Africa and I have direct hands-on experience of a lot of the plant referred-to.
Firstly
Almost every crude oil, above-ground Production Facility (these are mostly Gas-Oil Separation Plants or GOSP) near the producing wells will incorporate some VERY LIMITED water handling capability.
What I believe the company is referring to, and what needs to be planned for, is the methodology of dealing with a significant Water Cut – perhaps in the 15% - 25% and upwards order of magnitude. 25% of 40Mbopd is 10,000 barrels of water – and remember, that’s not even pure water, it is essentially contaminated water that should be dealt with accordingly. Consider too that if 25% of your fluid is water then only 75% max (take the gas into account as well!) of the volume can be crude.
Secondly
The Shaikan Production Facilities (PFs) currently both incorporate 2-stage Gas-Oil Separation vessels and, yes, they do have a limited capability to deal with a few barrels of water per day in this configuration – a VERY limited capability.
To deal with any significant water production, however, there will almost certainly have to be incorporated a 3rd Stage Separator Vessel. Ideally this should have been foreseen at FEED stage and plant layout designed accordingly (to minimise future downtime). As the early CPR reported only dry oil, with absolutely no water, it’s unclear what water handling parameters, if any, were given to the plant fabricator.
Thirdly
Hand-in-hand with the water handling consideration is the GOR – dealing with a fluctuating or increasing percentage of produced gas. I note that ERCE mentioned the varying bubble point (pressure) issue in their CRP and as bottom hole pressure drops more and more gas will bubble out of solution in the fractures and make its way to the wellbore. At the wellbore you will then effectively have both separate flows of gas and crude entering your casings. The introduction of ESPs will have to take all of this into consideration, and the design parameters for the ESP System (It’s not just a pump, it’s a complete and complex production system with sub-systems and a complex electronic control system too at surface) mean that it most definitely not an off-the-shelf item.
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