Production from many oil and gas fields is restricted as the reservoir pressure drops. This situation becomes worse when water-cut also increases. The restrictions in production also apply to satellite fields or in deep water applications where long distance transport of fluids is involved. In order to maintain production at an economical rate and also to increase total recovery from the field, a production boosting system is always required. Some production boosting solutions require major investment and major changes or upgrading of the existing production system. Surface Jet Pumps (SJPs) are simple, low cost, passive devices which use a high pressure (HP) fluid as the motive force to boost the pressure of produced gas and liquid phases. The system enables the flowing wellhead pressure (FWHP) to be reduced in order to increase production, whilst meeting the downstream production pressure requirements. A high pressure fluid is needed as the source of energy or motive flow. The applications of Surface Jet Pumps include revival of dead or liquid loaded oil and gas wells. The oil and gas industry has in recent years become more aware of their applications and benefits. This paper covers their main applications including boosting production from selected oil and gas wells, boosting the pressure of low pressure gas, prevention of flaring very low pressure gas, eliminating the need for intermediate compressors, de-bottlenecking compressors, preventing HP wells backing out LP wells and revival of liquid loaded wells. In addition to referring to recent field examples, issues such as performance, ranges of operation, key features of the system and solutions for gas or oil production applications are described. The paper also addresses the economic aspects and pay-back periods. Field applications have shown that the recovery of the capital spent in installing surface jet pumps is generally achieved within a few weeks to a few months.

Oil producers sometimes perform unexpectedly below expectations. Low performance could be caused by many reasons. Formation damage inside the near wellbore region, liquid load-up, and high back pressure imposed by the production system are just some listed among the many reasons. To revive or to boost the production of under-performing wells, especially impacted by liquid load or by high back pressure, a surface jet pump provides a quick and economical way as it consumes no external energy such as electricity and contains no moving parts. The surface jet pump utilizes the pressurized fluids from a good producer to generate a suction power. The suction power created can be then used to reduce the back-pressure imposed on a weak producer sitting beside the good producer. The performance of this weak producer is therefore improved. Presented and discussed in this paper is the brief description of working principle of a surface jet pump, factors affecting its performance, candidate well selection for the application, and a case study for one trial test of a surface jet pump in Safaniya field. Intensive well rates data along with wellhead pressure reduction over 60 days under different testing scenarios were collected, analyzed and presented to showcase the success of its application in one location of Safaniya field. The trial test was successfully completed with positive results showing the feasibility of production boosting capacity achieved by a surface jet pump through both real production increase and reduction of back pressure imposed on the weak producers. To streamline the field implementation of the surface jet pump, and to meet the production increase expectation, some factors highlighted in the paper, which have a big impact on its outcome, must be carefully examined when choosing a candidate well for the application. Failure to consider the importance of those factors would result in no production gain at all.

Innovative Velocity SpoolTM (Surface Jet Pump) technology combined with novel compact separation was tested at a remote onshore wellhead location in Saudi Arabia to see if it could increase multi-phase production from low pressure oil wells that were already producing and revive wells that were backed out/not flowing. The Velocity Spool (VS) is a passive device which utilises often wasted fluid energy (via a choke) from a high pressure (HP) well to reduce the back-pressure of a low pressure (LP) well and boost its' flow to the production manifold. For the VS to work efficiently on multi-phase oil wells, a compact in-line separator is installed upstream to bulk separate the gas and liquid fluids. For this trial, one of Caltec's patented VS multiphase skids was installed at an onshore wellhead location and connected to existing HP and LP wells. Production from both wells was diverted to the VS to test its effectiveness. The trial tests lasted 3 months. Results from the first set of tests showed that the VS boosted production from an LP oil well that was already flowing by an additional average of 400 bbls/d with a corresponding wellhead pressure reduction of 45 psi. Results from the second set of tests showed that the VS revived a dead well that had not been flowing since 2004 and made it flow at an average rate of 1100 bbl/d with a backpressure pressure reduction ranging from 54 to 27 psi. Prior to the trial, several attempts had been made to bring this dead well back into production using other methods but these had not been successful. The results showed conclusively that the VS was very effective in boosting production from LP oil wells using passive surface mounted equipment and avoiding any well intervention. The production gain was achieved by lowering the FHWP of the well and the amount of gain was dependent on the productivity index of the well. The advantages that the VS offers over conventional technologies such as Multi-phase pumps and ESPs are several: it is tolerant to variations in flow conditions, gas volume fractions (GVF) and associated slugging (without affecting performance), it is surface mounted (so well intervention is not required), low cost, easy to deploy, has no moving parts, consumes zero fuel gas/electrical power and uses already available surplus energy. This paper reports the trial results and discusses the use of Velocity Spools as an alternative to other boosting methods for oil production. The design and operational criteria of the VS are also highlighted.

The natural depletion of reservoirs with increased water-cut and aging facilities has forced the oil and gas industry to improve methods and technologies for the ultimate hydrocarbon recovery. A compact patented in-line cyclonic separator, called the Wx, has been developed as a solution. The unit is a single passive device used to separate bulk-water from a water continuous (oil-water) mixture. It is capable of recovering up to 60% of inlet total water production at a quality of 1000 ppm or less. Wx technology has been extensively tested in the UK and has also been successfully deployed onshore and offshore in Norway. This paper discusses how Wx oil/water compact separator can be used with existing technologies to address the issues of ‘High Water cuts’, in order to recover maximum hydrocarbons. It also discusses the performance of the Wx unit in terms of pressure drops, flow turn-down/turn-up, sensitivity to inlet water cut, tolerance to gas, separation quality including operation, control, capacity, applications and some of its key features.

Production from many oil and gas fields is restricted as the reservoir pressure drops. This situation becomes worse when water-cut also increases. The restrictions in production also apply to satellite fields or in deep water applications where long distance transport of fluids is involved. In order to maintain production at an economical rate and also to increase total recovery from the field, a production boosting system is always required. Some production boosting solutions require major investment and major changes or upgrading of the existing production system. Surface Jet Pumps (SJPs) are simple, low cost, passive devices which use a high pressure (HP) fluid as the motive force to boost the pressure of produced gas and liquid phases. The system enables the flowing wellhead pressure (FWHP) to be reduced in order to increase production, whilst meeting the downstream production pressure requirements. A high pressure fluid is needed as the source of energy or motive flow. The applications of Surface Jet Pumps include revival of dead or liquid loaded oil and gas wells. The oil and gas industry has in recent years become more aware of their applications and benefits. This paper covers their main applications including boosting production from selected oil and gas wells, boosting the pressure of low pressure gas, prevention of flaring very low pressure gas, eliminating the need for intermediate compressors, de-bottlenecking compressors, preventing HP wells backing out LP wells and revival of liquid loaded wells. In addition to referring to recent field examples, issues such as performance, ranges of operation, key features of the system and solutions for gas or oil production applications are described. The paper also addresses the economic aspects and pay-back periods. Field applications have shown that the recovery of the capital spent in installing surface jet pumps is generally achieved within a few weeks to a few months.