Artificial Lift Options

Given the complex wellbore geometry, artificial lift will become an important driver for Umiat profitability.

If recovery from the development is to be maximized, withdrawals of all liquids at the lowest possible bottomhole pressure will be a goal of the artificial lift system. The use of electric submersible pumps (ESPs) is currently the preferred option. However, with gas injection for pressure maintenance, high gas-oil ratios may prevail with time.

Recent experience in high gas / low liquid horizontal environments has shown that fluids accumulating in low spots or “stamps” along the horizontal length create an oscillating gas surge that unloads fluids but also tends to vapor lock the ESP intake.

The ESP is planned to be placed in the deepest straight and horizontal section of the lower lateral of each well. This should cause all liquids to be removed from the wellbore at the lowest possible removal point, thus using gravity and fall-back to aid in gas separation.

Since the wells are shallow, the pump horsepower requirements are not extreme and a short pump can be pushed into the horizontal section if the wellbore size is large enough and doglegs are kept reasonable.

Gas lift is the other accepted technique for producing below a curved portion of a wellbore. With gas injection as the secondary recovery method, gas lift is a viable option and gas breakthrough will provide some additional lift capacity.

Lift gas delivered at 400-600 psia would be sufficient to lift significant volumes of Umiat oil. This option may be less capital intensive than ESPs but requires greater gas compression volumes.

The oil business

The oil business is not only extraction, but also processing and sales of oil products, which are undergoing progressive development. These sectors are already attracting significant investments, and they will continue to grow in the future. Oil and gas companies are actively investing in the processing sector, improving oil refinement in order to increase the quality of petroleum products, oils, mazut and other. What does it mean for IT? This is a huge opportunity and a major field of activity, because any petroleum refinery cannot operate without elementary resource planning, such as an ERP system. And here we are proud to say what 80 percent of oil refinement plants in Russia use ERP on HP platforms on UNIX or Windows operating systems. As for sales, in the preceding and the current year, companies have increased investments into the retail sphere and into IT support of filling stations. A filling stations turns into a supermarket with a laundry, internet café and other services, which promise to be even more profitable than selling fuel. Last year we had several projects involving the automation of filling stations, which meant the creation of a mini-IT center at each filling station. Now we see that this part our business is just starting to gain pace.

Oil hydrogeology

Belarusian research and design institute of oil « BelNiPIneft» is one of the leading divisions of republic. Great opportunities of the institute help to solve the broad range of problems in all activities of any oil and gas company.

They do research projects and offer services in oil hydrogeology:

Oil field hydrochemical researching working out and adaptation of new and existing rather inexpensive hydrochemical methods for oil field development control:

- water cutting prediction of well production;

- identification of the produced fluid nature;

- analysis of direction and velocity of injected and brine water;

- identification of the most washed out parts in an oil pool;

- evaluation of producing and injecting well interconnection;

- specification of an oil pool hydrodynamics;

- control of the volume changes of filtration channels;

- estimation of injected water portion in produced brines and the volume of water brines intruded into a pool ;

- salt – crystallization forecast and control of this phenomenon;

- geological structure revision of oil pools;

- quality evaluation of carried out geological and technical works and determination of the start of normal well operation.

Their new projects:

Fundamentally new hydrochemical methods for analysis and control of oil field development and producing well operation were worked out and applied. At present, these are ones of the few inexpensive and at the same time effective field methods that are based on the mass instrumental measurements (reservoir water and oil density, water chemical composition).

The research results show not only the expediency but also the high performance of offered methods for solving many operative and retrospective oil exploration and development problems. Some of the elaborated methodical principles are unique and can underlie oil field hydrochemical research almost in any oil and gas bearing region.