ESP Field Operational Score – A Unified Approach to ESP Performance Benchmarking

Abstract

Abstract Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESPs) contribute over 60% of the Kuwait's oil production from 2,500 ESPs. Past efforts in benchmarking ESP performance were based on single metric reporting such as run life, reliability, failure rates and downtime reported separately resulting in often contradictory results. The Field Operational Score (FOS) was developed as a more holistic and integrated approach in measuring ESP performance answering questions such as how often do downtime event occur and how long do they last? How fast can we identify a trip and restart production? How many days will an ESP operate before failing and how likely will it prematurely fail? The FOS enables a unified and well-rounded approach to measuring ESP operational performance which includes factors often overlooked in ESP benchmarking. The FOS metrics include production downtime (ESP and Non-ESP related), trips, response time, premature failure rate, run life, data quality and entry time. Each of these metrics has been assigned a unique weightage and when combined result in a performance score reflecting the operational performance of individual ESPs. The FOS for each ESP is based on the previous fiscal year performance against the accumulative current fiscal year performance with an expected improvement of 5%. Once calculated, the score highlights areas of improvement and deterioration in ESP operations. When grouping multiple ESPs, the FOS is the summation of the individual ESP's KPIs resulting in the combined score of a cluster of ESPs. The FOS clusters are embedded into the field operational staff hierarchy ensuring that a fair and balanced benchmark is applied to all related staff such as Team leaders (500 – 1000 ESPs), senior engineers (150-250 ESPs), and field engineers (50 – 100 ESPs). By linking field staff KPIs directly to their ESP cluster performance, more proactive and effective efforts were exerted by the field staff towards ensuring optimum ESP operations. The FOS enabled management staff to become more involved in individual well performance as opposed to previous dependency on individual engineer efforts. As a result of the routine FOS, multiple operational enhancements were adapted such as increasing the SCADA connectivity for ESPs, more effective troubleshooting procedures, proactive ESP monitoring, and targeted ESP intervention. Although targeted at 5%, the improvement in the last fiscal year was upwards of 15% with each metric outperforming its' previous fiscal year's performance. By assigning each ESP its own KPI, targeted intervention is enabled allowing the field staff to quickly identify weak performing ESPs and improve its performance. The application of detailed benchmarking has shown to guide both ESP field staff and management towards identifying individual weak performing ESPs per metric, unifying performance into a single operational score, and focuses on improving the overall performance of ESP operations.