Publications

Bekapai field was discovered in 1972, production commenced in July 1974 and the peak production was achieved in June 1978. This paper presents a challenging and comprehensive artificial lift selection process in mature offshore field, after produced by natural flow for more than 40 years. The screening process is a very important step for the long term profitability of the field. During the initial screening process, several aspects of subsurface characteristic and surface limitation have been studied to find the feasible artificial lift method. It shows that electric submersible pump (ESP) has several critical limitations to be implemented in this field. A long term evaluation then performed to evaluate the impact of any subsurface and surface variations on the performance of artificial lift. Integrated production model was used to predict the long term performance and ultimate recovery, either naturally or using gas lift and ESP. This model is a numerical simulation to describe the reservoir behavior, production system and find the optimum production strategy by integrating the reservoir models, well models and the surface network model. Impact of any variations in reservoir, well condition and surface parameters are evaluated until end of life or economical limit of this field. Based on this evaluation, gas lift and ESP have higher recovery factor than natural flow condition. The production cumulative is expected increase by more than 40% for the next 10 years. In this simulation also observed that gas oil ratio (GOR) is increasing by time, it’s a critical limitation for ESP. By performing long term evaluation and economical evaluation, it’s confirmed that gas lift is the most feasible artificial lift method for Bekapai field. This comprehensive selection process also ensures the long term profitability of the field.