Workshop Overview
On September 19 – 21, 2022, a kickoff workshop for the Permian Basin Subgroup of the Electric Submersible Pump Reliability Information and Failure Tracking System (ESP-RIFTS) joint industry project was held in Midland, Texas. 17 participants from four ESP operating companies were in attendance.
The focus on of the workshop was sharing technical knowledge and development of a data collection and bench-marking road-map.
Participating Companies
Technical Knowledge Sharing
Participants shared and compared strategies to address key technical challenges in the Permian Basin, including:
- When to install an ESP during a well’s lifecycle, including design approaches considering trade-offs between maximizing drawdown and reliability.
- When to conduct a proactive ESP pull.
- Criteria to evaluate if ESP components can be reused.
- Strategies that have been trialled to:
- Monitor ESPs;
- Separate and handle gas, and
- Prevent sand production, and mitigate ESP reliability issues resulting from sands/solids production.
- Recent common failures observed from Participants, including potential causes and mitigation measures.
Data Collection and Benchmarking Roadmap
The Participants agreed on a plan to regularly upload data into the shared ESP‑RIFTS database to allow benchmarking of ESP KPIs.
- Attendees agreed to create a new, Permian Basin-specific Minimum Data Set (MDS), which would list the parameters needed to properly calculate and contextualize the ESP KPIs that Permian Participants want to track.
- Attendees agreed to a schedule of uploading data to the shared database twice per year for up-to-date benchmarking.
- Attendees agreed on an enforcement plan to help ensure that all companies upload data twice per year.
