Abstract
The following diploma thesis is discussing Progressive Cavity Pumps (PCPs) and their application in OMV E&P Austria. PCP manufacturers highlight great advantages compared to other pump assisted artificial lift methods; hence their application in the Oil and Gas industry is increasing. The main advantage is the ability of handling multiphase flow and relatively high sand contents which is beneficial especially in brown field development. The goal of this thesis is to find the reasons for the poor performance and to make recommendations for the future. The first installation in Austria by OMV was done in 2003 and since then the PCPs are not operating in the desired mode/range. At the moment OMV Austria has 19 PCPs installed and most of them are not operating. The main causes for failures are tubing leaks and elastomer problems. Mean time between failures (MTBF) is low compared to other downhole pumps, as a result the PCPs are exceeding their economic limit. Before the individual OMV wells will be discussed a general introduction to PCPs will be given. The working principle and the pump specifications are explained and the process of using performance charts is shown. Then the history of the individual wells will be presented. To support the well history a table with workover data and a production history plot is provided. Then the limits in operating conditions like sand, gas, depth and rate will be analysed from field experience. Afterwards there is a comparison of the PCP performance with other companies (RAG and Petrom). Then a tool will be introduced which is used to do failure analysis on site. Different operating parameters like torque or rpm can be measured and analysed with a software called MatriX. Afterwards centralizers and their performance in PCP installations will be introduced. Then relined tubing is introduced including OMVs field experience with relined tubing. A very big topic in PCP installations is the stator elastomer which will be handled in the next chapter. The different elastomers and their advantages and disadvantages are listed. In the end an economic study on the existing PCP wells has been done to analyse their performance. This study will be followed by a list of improvement potentials and optimization for the next installations. While improvement potential is more focused on the technical side the optimization part is specialized on documentation and failure analysis. To put more emphasis on the need of improvement the chapter HSEQ aspects will show up some near misses in OMV which are related to PCPs.
Translated title of the contribution | Optimierung von Exzenterschneckenpumpen in reifen Ölfeldern der OMV Austria |
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Original language | English |
Qualification | Dipl.-Ing. |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisors/Advisors |
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Award date | 18 Dec 2009 |
Publication status | Published - 2009 |
Bibliographical note
embargoed until nullKeywords
- PCP OMV oil production oil fields