Producing from a high-permeability sandstone reservoir such as in Saudi Arabia's offshore fields has unique challenges, which include sand production, high-water production, and early water breakthrough due to active water drive and reservoir heterogeneity. These challenges add to the difficulty in the use of artificial lift where wells in different segments of the field were recently equipped with electrical submersible pumps (ESPs). This offshore field had seen an evolution of completion practices directed to resolve each challenge independently, until recently where an optimum integrated completion design was developed to overcome all challenges and optimize production, extend the producing life of the wells, and enhance recovery for the long term.The subject wells were completed with multilaterals targeting different layers in the reservoir. Inflow control devices (ICD) were used in the open hole completion for each lateral to enhance the well's influx balance and control/delay water production. The intelligent completions (IC) solution, which consists of inflow control valves (ICVs), permanent downhole monitoring system gauges, and multiport packers, are employed to control lateral production. In addition, a hydraulic line wet mate (HLWM) connect system is used to combine an ESP Pod system with an intelligent completion in multilateral wells. In most cases, due to the limited run life of an ESP, the pumps need to be replaced every few years. The HLWM connect system provides the flexibility to replace the ESP without having to retrieve the intelligent completion (ICVs, multiport packers, etc.), which saves cost and time.This paper describes the integrated completion design used to overcome the subject field's production challenges and will illustrate by an example how ICDs, ICVs, HLWM, and ESPs accomplished that goal. The integrated completion system helps enhance/optimize well production, allowing for efficiently draining the reservoir; and maximizing production and recovery. This paper will also summarize adapting the IC solution to practice and field example tests of such an IC solution design.

Drag reducing agents (DRA) are commonly used in the industry to increase pipelines' throughput by reducing the frictional pressure drop along the pipeline segment. The application of DRA has been primarily for single phase flow; however, a multiphase DRA was introduced and trial tested in an offshore gas-oil separation plant (GOSP) in Saudi Arabia to maximize the production of heavy oil from the GOSP without the need to flare the excess produced gas. This initiative was considered to avoid a major GOSP upgrade.

Saudi Aramco's rapidly growing portfolio of fields and wells demands the employment of innovative approaches to manage its assets efficiently in today's challenging economy. One of the main strategies that the company has adopted is the creation of a highly interactive surveillance environment called Production Operations Surveillance Hub (POSH), that supports business collaboration and efficient decision making processes. POSH enables the business to exceed geography and time by consolidating multidisciplinary team knowledge, streamlining communication, providing real-time collaboration and facilitating quick decision making. The POSH also provides an e-workplace for oil and gas production automation and optimization that allows business team members and their partners (within and outside the company) to communicate and coordinate activities from anywhere in real time. The creation of this environment started with a comprehensive assessment of the production engineering (PE) activities and processes. The assessment was conducted through electronic surveys, face-to-face interviews and interactive workshops to gather the required information from PE experts and develop a full understanding of their work processes. These “as is” processes were then transformed into “to be” workflows where technology applications were associated with each step of the process. A detailed design phase followed, which involved defining the engineering calculations, the communication protocol and the data exchange pathways among the different components of each workflow and between the workflows. A cataloging and organization phase followed in which four main themes were identified for the POSH and aligned with Saudi Aramco's intelligent fields' development strategy. The four focus areas include: well and field activities management; intelligent field equipment performance and real-time data health; electric submersible pumps (ESP) surveillance and pre-diagnostic; and well production and performance monitoring. This paper describes the assessment planning and implementation process. The paper also illustrates the value of this process through elaboration on the assessment outcome and provision of details of the POSH themes and functions. This step is essential for the success of the deployment of Saudi Aramco's first POSH and similar collaborative environments.

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