Historical case of Offshore application of Booster ESP in wells with Heavy Oil and High Percentage of H₂S and CO₂

The purpose of this document is to share the development of the application of Booster ESP in wells with high power requirements and high rates which are located in Marine Region of México where fails means high impacts in costs. These reservoirs are characterized for its high annual decline rate of reservoir pressure, from 4 to 7 kg/cm² per year what means low statics level of fluid, 2000 tvd, and low pump intake pressures compared to the bubble pressure of the field, in addition to heavy crude oil (10 °API) with low percentage of water (0 – 30%), high percentage (>20%mol) of hydrogen sulfide acid (H₂S), high percentage (>10%mol) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and high temperatures (from 120 to 130 °C). The application of this kind of completions or configurations where Dual ESP Pods operate simultaneously, will allow to widen the operational range of those wells or ESP that are limited by power, depth, pressure, or temperature through a distribution of loads between both ESP reducing power requirements and motor temperature and hence, scale precipitation, increasing the ESP run life. Once Booster system design was defined, an application plan which consist of two phases was deployed, the first phase showed that Upper ESP operate with high motor temperature vs Lower ESP, about 4 and 8%, this due to heat transfer. The second phase, where the dual ESP system was optimized and designed according to the well needs show excellent results, reducing current consumption and power requirements between 20 and 40%, furthermore, motor temperature reduce almost 10%.

The novelty of this project is in the ability to increase the experience with this kind of operational philosophy with heavy oil, high temperature and low-pressure reservoirs, that will allow to increase run life and reduce operating costs for interventions due to recurrent failures.