Publications

X Field is a mature waterflood field with huge number of production wells (>1,000 wells). Currently, 100% of wells are producing with Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESPs) as the artificial lift method with wide range of production rate between 100 BFPD – 18,000 BFPD. A fast and robust tool is required to monitor those wells so that proactive action can be taken to restore production and prevent oil loss due to unexpected down time caused by ESP failure. This paper illustrates the application of Fuzzy Logic (FL) approach to develop detection tool of ESP failure symptoms using limited surveillance data such as production rate, ampere, and working fluid level. Diagnosis is performed by processing trend of each parameter in several evaluation windows within set of expert rules. It allows production engineers to monitor ESP performance and recognize early signs of gradual failure before it becomes more severe over running time and focus can be prioritized for the most severe wells. This analysis is powerful in stable condition with long historical data in order to have clear trend. It is not intended to be used in unstable condition such as start up or sudden failure due to power outage. After 12 months tool implementation, it is successful to add more than 61 MBO to production from 28 proactive pump replacement jobs that has been proposed based on the tool detection.