Image Source: Intech Process Automation, "Artificial Lift Solutions", 2016, Web. Accessed June 2018.
Approximately 90 percent of all the producing oil fields in the world require some sort of artificial lift to produce oil at an economically viable scale. The most widely used method of inducing an artificial lift to the downhole hydrocarbon is an Electric Submersible Pump—ESP.
ESPs are used in more than 300,000 oil wells around the globe. The main reason behind its perverseness lies with its versatility and efficiency. Although there are different ESPs with many disparate properties such as motor power, number of diffusion disks and various other physical characteristics, ESPs are generally compatible with a majority of the oil wells.
ESPs provide a superior overall efficiency as compared to other pumps such a progressive cavity pumps.While PCPs make use of helical rotors and the surrounding cavities as means of vertical transport, ESP use the concept of induced pressure differential with the means of high speed centrifuges. The centrifuges provide kinetic energy to the fluid which moves above the stationary diffusers to create a pressure difference for the subsequent volume of fluid to move up.
A drawback to ESPs is its vulnerability to certain operating conditions and frequent maintenance procedures. Power fluctuations among other things can damage and reduce the life of an ESP. Such a case was followed by Lift IQ services in an oil well in Nigeria. The company developed a remote system for operating the ESP to avoid major changes and hinder once in its operating condition. The improvisation resulted in a 31% increase in efficiency of the ESP, along with an increased production of 56,200 bbl over a period of 123 days.
Source:
Schlumberger ltd.,"Case Study: Lift IQ Service Improves ESP Uptime by 33.6%, Reducing Deferred Production for NAOC",
https://www.slb.com/resources/case_studies/artificial_lift/lift-iq-naoc-nigeria-cs.aspx,
June 2018, Web, 25 June 2018.
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