The gas coming from ESP wells that produce from high-GOR reservoirs has devastating effects on well productivity and ESP run life resulting from issues such as gas locking of the pump. Previously, operators managed these wells with regular site visits and manual operations. A field technician would visit the field to manually bleed off the casing head pressure and leave the annular casing valve cracked open until the next gas event occurs. Wells that needed intervention could take days to weeks to get back to the standard producing behavior.
Solution
An automated ESP gas-handling system,
including wireless sensors, and a solar-powered
skid with a flow computer and an automated
choke valve to control the annular gas flow
rate, was managed by the Agora™ edge AI
and IoT solutions to optimize the well and
ESP performance.
AI at the edge
Agora edge automatically captured tubing
head pressure and casing head pressure from
the wireless sensors, gas flow rate from the
skid, and ESP data, and then synchronized the
parameters prior to transmitting the data to the
cloud. All this data is also consumed by a well
model installed in the edge computing gateway,
which accounts for the effect of the produced
gas on ESP performance and autonomously
sends commands to control the fully automated
skid supplied by our partner, Sensia.
The edge application captures the gas rate measured by the flow computer and identifies the correct opening of the casing annular valve based on well-flow simulation models, with the ability to incorporate a physics-based model using the Eclipse™ industry-reference reservoir simulator and data-driven estimation using machine learning. The edge application sends commands to the automated skid to adjust the casing valve, preventing production halting gas-lock conditions.
This iterative process results in proper ESP optimization in hours instead of days or weeks, with no manual intervention required. By deploying the automated ESP gas-handling system to over 40 high-GOR wells, the operator expects to gain 400,000 bbl/y (1,095 bbl/d more per well) and reduce 14,000 km of driving in harsh environments within the next year. It also eliminates the intervention expense of sending a field technician to the field to investigate and remedy the persistent gas-lock issues.