Protecting Your Budget
The most essential consideration for any ESP’s production performance and cost-efficiency is its proper sizing and design. Site choice and completion are certainly important but getting the most oil and gas to the surface in the most efficient way possible depends on matching the application with the well’s unique characteristics.
The wrong decision can, at least, reduce production and profits. At worst, it can waste delimited CAPEX and adversely affect the well’s run life. Proper analysis leading to ideal sizing is the key to protecting your budget and maximizing production over the life of a well. asset that won’t become a paperweight if you change your ESP motor technology tomorrow.
THE PROBLEM:
A producer in the Permian Basin had plans to drill and complete 330 wells in FY22, producing them with ESPs.
The producer was looking at a 10% reduction in annual projected production and a 10% decrease in well completions.
Due to inflation and increased prices from service companies, the producer was looking at a 10% reduction in annual projected production and a 10% decrease in well completions.
As their limitations became clear, the producer called Extract for advice: Should they look at alternative lift options or defer production by selecting smaller equipment?
THE PROCESS:
Extract employed its proprietary NODAL-based optimization software, XSIZE, to perform a comparison between the producer’s choice sizing and an alternative, more affordable approach. The comparison, shown in figure 1 below, showed two different scenarios for optimizing performance by thoroughly evaluating the complete production assembly on the well profile.
The results confirmed that if they were willing to defer approximately 140 bopd for the first few weeks of production, the producer could not only save $60,000 per well, they wouldn’t take an economic hit from deferred production due to the more efficiently sized unit’s ability to draw the well down quicker later in the life of the run.
Conclusion
By optimizing the customer’s well application with XSIZE, Extract’s alternative option will save the customer nearly $4MM in their annualized CAPEX budget and allow them to produce more fluids/oil across the entire ESP run.
