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WELL INTERVENTION OPPORTUNITIES IN MALAYSIA - PRODUCTION ENHANCEMENT AND OPTIMIZATION TO REJUVENATE THE PRODUCTIVITY OF MATURED BROWNFIELDS

It is a well known fact that more than 70% of the oil produced in the world's market today came from fields that have been producing on average of 25 years or more. From the technical and operational standpoint, these fields are considered as matured fields (also known as brown fields). In Malaysia, the majority of the producing fields are in this category. These fields are experiencing various operational integrity problems and encountering a rapid decline in production, resulting in many wells to be shut-in. The inventory continues to grow every year.

Based on the Well Intervention Technology Forum (organized by Petronas Carigali) held a few years back (March 2010) in Sabah, Malaysia, it has been reported during the session that out of the total of more than 3425 well strings in Malaysia, approximately 52% of them are idle. This accounted to about 1781 well strings. And, the number is growing at 2% per annum. Most of the wells are offshore "platform wells" which are either producing via the main platform or satellite or unmanned platforms. The forum also revealed that 35% of the currently idle wells (622 wells strings) are still effective and stand the chance for revival.  

There are various problems that caused the wells to be shut-in, and the problems could culminate from a simple downhole mechanical problem to more complex problems related to reservoir, and well productivity and integrity issues. In some cases, the problems include facilities limitation (surface constrained and bottlenecking). Nevertheless, in any case, it is obvious that some kind of solutions needs to be implemented to the wells and/or platform in order to restore and revive their production. Recent Forum has identified that about 70% of the wells' problems are remedial and mechanical in nature. The rest are mostly related to the facilities and artificial lift integrity.

Examples of remedial work are such as stimulation work, production logging, routine well clean-up, de-sanding, and re-perforation, while the mechanical works are more on SCSSV change out, gas lift valves replacement, tubing repair, fish in the hole, and other normal routine well maintenance services. Most, if not all, of the above require some kind of intervention works to be implemented on the wells.

Currently, all the intervention works done on the wells are performed conventionally by loading the corresponding tools and skids on the platform. However, conventional rig-up and rig-down activities of any well intervention could take up to three days, and sometime could take up to a week or more, which in many cases leads to deferred production issues from other wells on the same platform to comply with certain safety regulations. This Non Productive Time (NPT) caused loss of production to operators. In addition, some of the platforms are logistically constrained and limited by the available deck space on the wellhead platform to install the required equipments to perform the works.

From the above, it can be concluded that there is a need to have an alternative way rather than relying on the conventional way to perform the well intervention works. This is where a Multi Purpose Well Intervention Vessel or "specialized vessel" become a very attractive solution.  For one, the intervention works can be performed without requiring lifting the bulky equipments and skids on the platform (all the equipments are in the vessel itself), thus solving the problem of space constrained on the platform. Also, with all the required equipments operating on the vessel, there is no need to load and unload them and the platform, thus reducing the rig-up and rig-down time tremendously.  

In Malaysia, the business opportunities for these specialized well intervention vessels are tremendous. With the bulk of the problems (of more than 600 wells) are related to remedial and mechanical works, there is a huge potential to capitalize this niche market, especially for slickline, electrical wireline and coiled tubing services. Please note that the above brief analysis only focused on providing services for the available idle wells in the inventory. This does not include the currently producing, and also the injection wells that also require routine maintenance services. Also, the above are for the existing "platform wells", not the deepwater subsea wells which Petronas, Shell and Murphy Oil are aggressively embarking into their development and drilling programs at the moment.

In short, based on the above brief write up, if we consider all aspects, it can be observed that the opportunities are very huge and the potential is tremendous!  

Written by:

Aldeenor