Intelligent Digital Oilfield Implementation: Production Optimization Using North Kuwait Integrated Digital Oil Field NK KwIDF

Abstract

Global oil demand has led to the development of new smarter drilling, completion, reservoir management technique and technology to optimize reservoirs production. The production of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has reached 3 MMBOPD and KOC’s 2030 vision is to boost the production to 4 MMBOPD. In order to achieve this vision, KOC has started several technical projects and development plans. One of these projects is the North Kuwait Integrated Digital Oil Field (NK-KwIDF) a full-fledged Field project implemented in KOC. This Paper will discuss the scale, complexity, technology used, and advantage of using the NK-KwIDF. The North Kuwait (NK) asset has five fields, around twelve hundred active wells, and seven Gathering Centers (GCs). A complex network of pipeline, trunk line, and manifold are used to connect these twelve hundred wells to GCs. In order to optimize the production from NK every barrel of production opportunity has to be considered by optimizing suitable wells and minimizing downtime from each field, resulting the development of an extensive surface network model. The extensive surface network model takes into consideration of each and every details of field e.g. pipelines, manifolds, details of GCs and wells. For each and every well in NK assets a well model is prepared considering all PVT parameters, completions, and surface co-ordinate and finally connected to surface network model with all piping information. Once the extensive surface model was prepared, several integrated workflows were developed in order to efficiently run the surface model and analyze the output from the run. Some of these workflows are ESP Optimization and ESP Analysis workflows, which have capability to identify the Oil Gain Opportunities and diagnose ESP performance. The identify opportunities are logged into ticketing system, which monitors the life cycle of the opportunity right from the identification till implementation into the field for Oil Gains. The full-fledged development of NK-KwIDF took almost 3 years from the day it was started, as a pilot project with 133 wells. When an excellent result in terms of production optimization and downtime minimization was recorded from the pilot project, the pilot project was expanded to full-fledged field project. The NK-KwIDF project gave an outstanding result of Oil gain from well level as well as Network level optimization. It established an excellent reputation in the oil industry where it was a source of attraction for many NOC’s and IOC’s to visit and follow the flag ship for their development and implementation of digital field technology.