Karachaganak is one of the world's largest oil and gas condensate fields in a deep heterogeneous carbonate reservoir with complex sour fluid system located in Western Kazakhstan. Karachaganak's estimated reserves are over 2.4 Bln bbls of condensate and 16 tcf of gas. The asset is co-operated by Shell and Eni through Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) b.v. Joint Venture. KPO successfully deployed a new KUAT operating center with aim to maximize production and improve collaboration among key functional groups managing day-to-day field activities. Maximizing oil production means getting the most condensate liquids to surface at a given gas (or other) constraints by routing producer wells through the network to arrive at the lowest field GOR. Experience showed that the key success factor was to establish a collaboration between Subsurface and Production departments built upon common understanding of field data. Physical embodiment of this collaboration is the Karachaganak Unified Action Team – KUAT, which means "power" in Kazakh. This center was established in 2020 with physical placement of Petroleum Engineers together with Production, Process and Planning Engineers in one Operating Center at the field site. The objectives of KUAT team include the following short-term integrated activities: Daily well line-up optimization as per integrated limit diagram views Integrated activity planning – e.g. optimized start-up of the new wells and projects Well surveillance planning and execution – from reference plans, EBS and opportunity-based GOR management Flow assurance KUAT team utilizes the industry standard digital solutions like PI and PI vision and Petex type of solvers as well as custom-made integrators like Data Integrator and Network Optimizer (DINO). In order to ensure that production is always maximized and potential downtime is minimized a robust understanding of the limit diagrams and well potentials is required. This information is provided by live integrated dashboards which include the real-time data from subsurface to export routes. The overall contribution from KUAT is estimated at ~7,000 BOPD or 3% of incremental field production. This paper will cover the overview of KUAT journey from early concept development to current state explaining how this center operates today. Workflows and improvements are included in the discussion as well as challenges faced throughout the implementation of newly developed team within the organization

Flaring has received significant attention over the past few decades and has become a major concern for many operators today. One of the contributors to hydrocarbon flaring is well clean-up operations, where traditionally oil and gas are disposed by flaring at the wellsite. This paper will share in details how integrating various technologies allowed to come up with a cost effective, zero flaring solution for well clean-up operations, that substantially reduced overall field carbon footprint. A common alternative to flaring is to store the crude in tanks and/or pump crude into production line, if available. However, the associated gas is typically flared off, as using gas compressors to inject gas into production line is extremely cost intensive and operationally complex. As an alternative, fit for purpose multiphase pumps, specifically designed to handle clean-up operations and combined with a high pressure surface well testing package proved to be a successful, innovative and cost effective solution to bring new wells to production without gas flaring. The pumps, installed at the inlet of a high-pressure separator, boost the pressure such that both oil and gas can flow directly into the production line, while water and spent acid from well stimulation treatment are separated out onsite into water tanks. The method does not require any hydrocarbon flaring, thereby drastically reducing emissions for well clean up and start up operations. The solution enabled a reduction of an average of 24 Kilo-Tonnes of CO2 equivalent of emmissions per well clean up, when compared to 100% flaring, resulting in a very significant and measurable positive environmental impact. The pumps proved to be reliable and fit for purpose, by toleranting high gas-volume-fraction (GVF) conditions and unstable flow, which is vital for clean-up operations. In addition, the setup proved to be an efficient pressure-boosting package, to gain additional production, by overcoming the high backpressure from the production lines network. The package was introduced in the giant Karachaganak oil and gas condensate field in Western Kazakhstan in high H2S environment, and was used in 13 wells over a two-years period, resulting in significant net production gains for the operator.