Reshaping Workover Operations in Kuwait Forever : The First Deployment of Wireline Deployed Pump in South East Field in Kuwait
Authors: Al-Shammari Fawaz , Al-Rashedi Hamad , Al-Meshwet Saad , Al-Rasheedi Kholoud , Abdullah Laila , Zubair Syed , Al-Dhafiri Abdulrahman , Jalan Shiv , Al-Harbi Khalid , Al-Abdulhadi Fahad , Abdulrahim Khaled , Nebbali Mourad , El Rashidy Ahmed , Al-Ajmi AbdulAziz , Tapdiya Raghuveer , Abd Manap Nurul Nabila , Crawford Calum , Browning Steve , McAleese Alan , Banda Mike , Ayyad Hazim 
Published: March 2023

Kuwait Oil Company operates several brown fields that produce more than 2M bbl\day. With reservoir being depleted and drop in reservoir pressure 60% of the KOC field dependent on utilizing artificial lift methods to produce their wells. This shifted the main workover activities to be ESP installations and changeouts. An ESP changeout takes in-between 30-45 days of operations, where wells will be shutdown waiting on workover rig.

KOC pioneered a novel workover solution to quickly restore production and minimize deferred oil in their brown fields. The technique utilizes High tension Wireline units to deploy a slim type ESP set inside production tubing with 8 hours only without the need of a work over rig. The rigless wireline ESP deployed pump system will play a pivotal role in how KOC will perform Workover operations in the future. Wells are placed back online with capacity of producing up to 1000 bbl\day. A detailed candidate selection is required pre every job to review the well barriers and confirm the capability of the pump to perform the operation. Proactive well management and surveillance require digital solutions with data seamless flow from downhole to the hands of engineers, edge computing enable operators to proactively manage their assets, detect and manage potential issues, and ultimately improve well performance. Additionally, this approach reduces the dependency of domain experts to frequently analyze data enabling the capability to act in real time. Once the Workover becomes available, the pump is retrieved, and the well is ready for workover eliminating any deferred production from the time ESP fails till workover is available. This paper will discuss the first deployment of this pump in Kuwait, which marks the longest deployment of such technologies globally.

The first of deploying the pump is to perform well simulation to ensure the pump will be capable of lifting the well. This is followed by a tubing integrity check to ensure that the well integrity is in a good condition and no fluid re-circulation is expected during production. The operations require setting a special packer inside the tubing to create a seat for the pump and the full Wireline stack pressure control equipment is rigged up on the wellhead and the pump is connected to the TEC cable mounted on the wireline unit drum. The complete deployment of the pump on Wireline unit takes between 8-10 hrs and the whole operation is done in less than 24 hours.

The first deployment of the new pump managed to restore a production of 1000 bbl of liquid in dead well that is waiting for workover to install an ESP. For the period of 30 days, the pump operated flawlessly and pumped 30,000 bbl of liquid to surface. A portable GOR conducted and observed that the WC of the well was around 60%.

Kuwait Oil Company saved around 18,000 of deferred production while waiting for rig to be available. The results allowed KOC to optimize the utilization of the assigned rig by performing other workover operations while the well was kept on producing.

The first installation paved the road for a long-term deployment of these pumps in Kuwait fields. In addition, the whole workover operations strategy will be revisited by having such a rigless capability.