Two common challenges to sustain production in North Kuwait (NK) include (1) management of artificial lift equipment run life and (2) reduction of production decline through pressure maintenance by water injection. Standard electric submersible pump (ESP) management guidelines promote practices to protect ESP run life while sacrificing well production rates. However, using operating rates that are not always safe can permit optimum reservoir recovery. Better management of well production targets is required to maintain safe ESP operation ranges while pushing the limits to increase production. A methodology has been developed to continuously optimize the well production potential without surpassing its safe operating envelope, keeping pump intake pressure (PIP) above the bubble point, ensuring optimum delivery at the surface, and minimizing pump downtime. This workflow was developed to assist the engineers in expediting data analysis and interpretation. This paper describes the developed production optimization methodology, which enables short- and long-term production enhancement while honoring reservoir, ESP, and surface constraints. The process involves historical and real-time data collection and production test interpretation. From this analysis, the best estimations of short- and long-term well production potentials are identified, and the correspondent action plans are determined. The developed workflow and the result of such an iterative production optimization process are illustrated. To date, as a result of this effort, an average of 8% in production gains has been certified in a number of wells in Sabriyah, NK.

One of the key strategic directions in Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) 2040 vision is the optimization of the portfolio to capitalize on opportunities and rationalize non-core and unprofitable assets. In this context as conventional low risk oil assets are becoming more mature, compensating for the associated oil production requires building a new efficient portfolio with new higher risk opportunities for filling this future gap. KOC as a National Oil Company (NOC), will have to work within the boundaries of available resources established in the National Development Plan (New Kuwait 2035) which sets the nation's long-term development priorities focus on diversified economy to reduce the country's dependence on oil export revenues in an environment with increasingly limited resources. A robust corporate portfolio management framework is necessary for dealing with a combination of existing assets undergoing operations and new opportunities that shall mature to become projects or programs related to tertiary recovery (EOR), production optimization (IOR) and development of non-conventional assets, all of which have higher uncertainties, risks and total cost per barrel. KOC 2040 vision identified four strategic dimensions that focus on delivering an efficient corporate portfolio: processes, operating model, organization structure and capabilities. The corporate portfolio management will have to deliver the maximum value prioritizing the opportunities, considering internal constraints on capabilities and resources, standardizing governance processes and then maturation of selected opportunities with sufficient subsurface definition (Front End Loading), for business capital investment decisions. The portfolio management will be assisted by unified models in economics, risks, reserves, production and capital allocation. Achieving the efficient corporate portfolio will require the preparation of a Master Change Management Project which will address the four strategic dimensions. Implementing this master change management project in an NOC, will face resistance or hesitation because of a deeply rooted culture. This paper proposed a framework to implement corporate portfolio management in KOC that can accommodate the challenges and align the processes with incremental changes across the dimensions instead of disruptive changes. The proposed framework allows the combination of several strategic objectives with certain economic values to produce the efficient portfolio by: 1) adapting current processes to worldwide best practices for opportunity assessment, including improved reservoir management practices as a fundamental step to identification of optimal opportunities that add value in the corporate portfolio, and 2) application of capable software to reduce complexities to manageable levels. As there is not a general corporate portfolio management model that can be replicated across oil companies, this paper is a contribution to resolve the implementation dilemma in real-life business, particularly for NOCs.