Sustaining hydrocarbon production using artificial lifting technology could be daunting to say the least. Over time, both surface and subsurface challenges associated to artificial lift applications and electric submersible pumping systems in particular, that impact hydrocarbon production make the system unappealing and uneconomical for field development. This paper attempts to review the challenges impacting ESP system optimization for sustainable hydrocarbon production in both brown and green fields during the current big data era. The producing environment as well as the ESP components used in field development and production require continuous optimization across the ESP system spectrum. Analysis and diagnosis of the producing well completion is essential to achieving a better optimization and sustainability of the desired production target. A two-approach system optimization is preferred to address the challenges impacting sustainable hydrocarbon production in an ESP completed well. The approach enumerated in the paper relies on the innovative technological advancement of data capturing, segmentation, and integration brought about by the fourth industrial revolution. The approach involves a top-to-bottom optimization in addition to real-time data integration. The increasing sophistication in ESP system platforms’, mobility, surveillance, connectivity, and storage technologies, joined with the ability to process and rapidly analyze data, improve agility, and support real-time on the spot automated decision making. These enhancements allow action execution to overcome the numerous challenges impacting production sustainability in ESP completed wells. This brings about increased and timely engagement between the equipment manufacturer, operator and the well. In addition, there is reduction in well downtime, increased uptime with overall resultant of sustained hydrocarbon production. A comprehensive approach to artificial lift hydrocarbon production optimization in an ESP completed well using data interwoven connectivity is preferred as the best approach to reactivate, boost, and sustain hydrocarbon production in this era of digitalization.

Summary Managing large-scale electrical submersible pump (ESP) operations and assessing their performance can be a challenging task. Diverse operational environments, widely spread geographical areas, large ESP populations, and different service providers are some of the complications facing operators. Nonetheless, it is vital to the success of any artificial lift project to establish a performance evaluation structure that can effectively capture deficiencies and highlight improvements. While many operators focus on run life statistics as the central key performance indicator (KPI) for ESPs, these types of statistics may not be sufficient in providing meaningful information to decision makers. Other important ESP performance parameters include ESP shutdowns (both planned and unplanned), restart time of tripped ESPs, commissioning time, failure rate, and the number of premature ESP failures. Thus, a comprehensive study was jointly initiated between an oil operator and ESP vendors to establish KPIs that drive improvements in all aspects. The selected KPIs were developed in a structure that ultimately focuses on maximizing production availability and revenue generation. By constructing the ESP KPI framework, subpar performance areas were clearly visible by both the operator and the service provider. Decision makers were able to identify and act on fields that lag in performance while exerting efforts to improve underperforming service providers. Furthermore, regular meetings were conducted to review the established KPIs and recommend some action items, which might focus on either technical or operational solutions. Finally, KPI targets were set on the basis of the review of historical trends and were assigned to be challenging yet relevant and attainable. The followed practice can prove to be successful in forming a common ground where service providers can quantify losses by the operator as a result of ESP performance deficiencies. Comprehensive data collection and keeping of ESP trips, failures, and replacements are critical to the success of this work. Regular review of field reports and well performance are imperative to accurately compute the various KPI formulas. In fact, many of the KPI calculations can be automated to capitalize on the available communication networks installed in the field to improve ESP monitoring and accurately assess their performance.

Many considerations are taken into account to ensure production targets are met for fields lifted by Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESP). ESP outages are indeed one of the major operational disturbances that significantly impact production strategies. Hence, a holistic structured framework for ESP outages has to be constructed to prevent or curtail ESP outages by capturing each of the planned and unplanned shutdowns effortlessly, comprehensively and effectively. It should, in fact, consider all parameters and relevant data that aid to better understand such outages; this would include root cause analysis, affected systems, and the production impact. It should also capture all required statistics while generating needed illustrative visuals for advanced analytics to identify the overall impact of ESP outages in a particular oil field. The outcome of the framework should be presented in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the ESP performance. Using the ESP outages framework will ensure capturing all related data and result in fruitful output using advanced statistical tools. This will clearly highlight both deficiencies and improvements for each area related to the operator companies or the service providers. Then, efforts will be made to assign timely corrective actions for fields that lag in performance while exerting efforts to improve underperforming service providers. This framework introduces a continuous tracking mechanism of ESP performance associated to outages through comprehensive KPIs. It has the ability to highlight the bad actors within the operator companies or the service providers and logical recommendations to address them. As a result, the number of outages (trips) and restoration time will be minimized which will lead to reducing the impact of revenue loss caused by the ESP production disruptions. In this structure, novel KPIs specifically focusing on ESP outages will be described in detail. Also, an integrated prototype of the ESP outages framework will be presented to demonstarte its effectiveness without further complicating other related process workflows.

Managing large-scale Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) operations and assessing their performance can be a challenging task. Diverse operational environments, widely-spread geographical areas, large ESP populations, and different service providers are some of the complications facing operators. Nonetheless, it is vital to the success of any artificial lift project to establish a performance evaluation structure that can effectively capture deficiencies and highlight improvements. While many operators focus on run life statistics as the central key performance indicator (KPI) for ESPs, these type of statistics may not be sufficient in providing meaningful information to decision makers. Other important ESP performance parameters include ESP shutdowns (both planned and unplanned), restart time of tripped ESPs, commissioning time, failure rate, and the number of premature ESP failures. Thus, a comprehensive study was jointly initiated between an oil operator and ESP vendors to establish KPIs that drive improvements in all aspects. The selected KPIs were developed in a structure that ultimately focuses on maximizing production availability and revenue generation. By constructing the ESP KPIs framework, subpar performance areas were clearly visible by both the operator and the service provider. Decision makers were able to identify and act on fields that lag in performance while exerting efforts to improve underperforming service providers. Furthermore, regular meetings were conducted to review the established KPIs and recommend some action items, which might focus on either technical or operational solutions. Finally, KPI targets were set based on the review of historical trends and were assigned to be challenging yet relevant and attainable. The followed practice can prove to be successful in forming a common ground where service providers can quantify losses by the operator as a result of ESP performance deficiencies. Comprehensive data collection and keeping of ESP trips, failures, and replacements are critical to the success of this work. Regular review of field reports and well performance are imperative to accurately compute the various KPI formulas. In fact, many of the KPI calculations can be automated to capitalize on the available communication networks installed in the field to improve ESP monitoring and accurately assess their performance.