Installation of A Sucker Rod Pumping System Over a Failed Electrical Submersible Pumping System to Recover Production Using Rigless Intervention

Abstract

Abstract This paper explains the design and the execution of a rigless intervention to resume production from a dry completion offshore installing successfully a Sucker Rod Pump (SRP) system replace a faulted redundant Electrical Submersible Pumping (ESP) system. Nowadays all oil companies need to work with small budgets and must search for methods of well intervention that reduce operational costs. Considering an offshore field, any intervention is very expensive. In the present case, in a unique well located in caisson platform, a conventional workover would consist recovering and replacing ESP system set at 3.350 ft that operated for about 10 years. To change the bottom hole equipment, a jackup rig was needed, but such a ring was not available and, even if available, its cost probably would be prohibitive for production maintenance. The solution adopted was to run SRP system with an insert pump anchor enabling it to be set at any depth inside the tubing, above the failed ESP assembly. A Linear Rod Pumping (LRP®) was chosen because its profile and its small footprint that allowed its installation with the small Caisson Platform topside area. A structure ("portico") was built on the caisson to perform the new system installation. The successful use of the SRP system permitted to resume production with short well downtime and reduced intervention costs, eliminating the need for a the workover jackup rig. Even though the outcome of the installed SRP system is around 50% of the last ESP registered flow rate, the solution was an economically attractive option to keep production and also allows future changes of the lifting system without the need of a workover rig.