Reaching A Million Barrels in an Abu Dhabi Field by Focusing on Operations Efficiency

In November 2021, the overall injection in this ADNOC Onshore field had dropped to its lowest ever level at 506 mbd. As production growth was expected over the next 5 years drastic steps needed to be taken to not only increase the water injection (WI) capacity but also improve the operations efficiency. This paper will provide details of how the asset achieved this as well as ended up doubling the injection volumes within 24 months. There were 3 different methods where injection capacity could not only be increased but also sustained. These were adding new WI clusters (WIC), enhancing the capacity of existing clusters and improving the operational efficiency (OE). New WICs were already planned through existing ongoing Projects. Following close coordination between the Subsurface and Field Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESP) teams it was decided to do a proactive changeout of existing ESPs in water supply wells (WSW). Lastly OE was tackled through enhanced surface level agreement (SLA) with Drilling for well shut-in requirements, efficient replacement of failed ESPs in WSW's as well as quick repairs of flowline leaks, surface pumps and other operational issues. 7 new WICs were added between 2021 and 2023 through existing projects which added approximately ~175 mbd of capacity. Out of these all 7 WIC's have been commissioned and currently 6 are online. 2 WSW ESPs were proactively changed out by adding new ESP with higher capacity and more stages and this added ~20 mbd of capacity. The entire SLA was renegotiated with Drilling and was based on simulation modeling, interference testing followed by trials in pilot wells, and this added approximately ~20 mbd to overall OE. Previously, it would take 4-6 weeks to replace a failed ESP, and this was seen as an improvement opportunity and following close coordination between Subsurface, Operations and ESP team this time was reduced by 50% to 2-3 weeks. Lastly, the Operations team helped to deliver the largest OE improvement through effective management of repairs of flowline leaks, surface pump failures as well as other repairs. Overall, these changes resulted in the Field injecting over 1,000,000 bwpd with 24 months of record lows. On average, one WIC was down every day due to flowline leaks. This was not sustainable, and a Leak detection task force was established to manage this. Instead of doing sectional flowline repairs, entire lengths were replaced. "Quick leak repair" methodology was developed and utilized in the Field. Lastly, successful pilots of using reinforced thermoplastic (RTP) flowlines were started in the Field and these are currently in evaluation phase with full field deployment expected soon. As a result of these changes flowlines leaks were reduced by over 50% and helped improve OE significantly.