Production technology designed for heavy oil recovery of a marginal field offshore Vietnam

Abstract

Production technology application in heavy oil production has been widely developed in industry over past decades in an effort to improve the ultimate recovery of this “difficult” hydrocarbon. Apart from thermal method, pumping technology makes remarkable advance by enlarging the draw-down created over the conventional gas-lift in several heavy oil projects. This paper presents the production technology design set out in the Field Development Plan (FDP) to enhance the wellbore lifting efficiency of a marginal heavy oil field offshore Vietnam. The finding of 200API viscous oil in Cuu Long Basin is weird to the geologist and its considerable large reserve challenges operator in thinking of a suitable development strategy to efficiently and economically extract this reserve. In so doing,a series of systematic technical studies has been purposely planned from the first encounter of heavy oil in wildcat well to the modelling study and asset design to accommodate the viscous fluid whilst optimizing the economic yield over the field life. Among them, the application of Electric Submersible Pump (ESP) was finally decided as the key driver to reinforce the well performance. As a result, the facility design at the surface such as surface electrical system coupledwith gas-lift back-up, sand control, chemical injection and so on, all integrated in one to boost production and prolong well life.