Publications

The Belida field is an offshore oil field that has been producing for more than 25 years. Post its golden era in mid-90 where the oil production was peaked at 130 MBOPD, currently Belida field is producing lower. Various sub-surface and surface optimization effort were made to maintain Belida field base production. Surface back pressure reduction is always be an option to assess. While the surface operating parameter and pressure has been optimized, the production flow choke installed also giving another 10-50 psi additional back-pressure to the oil and gas wells. A combination of operational needs and evaluation made between 2005 – 2010 have decided to replace the installed production chokes with the tee spools to keep the well producing and or reducing the surface back pressure to gain more oil. A total of 14 wells were successfully replaced from production chokes to the tee spools. The goals to maintain the production baseline and to get more oil were successfully achieved, over the time of its production life some challenges arose related to the installed tee spool. It was obviously proven to prolong the life of an oil well and reducing the surface back-pressure to gain more oil, but there were some other well integrity and operational aspect impacted requiring further assessment to those installed tee spools. Frequent production tree valve failure occurred, un-ability to regulate/choke well fluid flow if required, the absent of double blocks/barriers when needed. This paper evaluates the well integrity and operational challenges appeared post tee spool installation on those 14 wells and the impact to the production and cost. Based from the evaluation, it is now decided to replace the current tee spools installed back to the production flow chokes.