BP announced Monday that a newly retrofitted vessel has been launched to be used for acid stimulation activities in 17 selected wells in its operated Azer-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) offshore field, marking a first-of-its-kind project for the region.
According to BP, this is the first time well stimulation from a vessel will be applied to the Caspian to enhance field production. Historically, this activity has been performed from platforms, creating challenges including rig equipment availability, additional personnel on board, limited acid volume due to deck space and safety issues related to handling of chemicals. In addition, platform stimulation technique was a time-consuming activity – stimulation of 14 wells has taken two years to complete since 2016.
Mike Zanghi, BP’s Vice President, Wells, said, “We have been thinking about optimizing our wells stimulation activity for some time looking at various options. Globally, this operation is performed from fit-for-purpose pumping vessels, however, due to the logistical constraints related to transportation via canals, it has been impossible to bring such a vessel to the Caspian. Therefore, we decided to install the stimulation plant onto one of our service provider vessels relieving our platforms from a resource consuming operation.”
The vessel that has been retrofitted for the project, Caspian Provider, is owned by Topaz, and the project was implemented by Baker Hughes, a GE company.
Commissioning activities on the vessel were completed at the end of November with plans to commence the first stimulation operation for the West Azeri platform in mid-December.
“This is yet another modernization effort for the Caspian which will enable us to further enhance the efficiency of our assets including production,” Zanghi said.
ACG currently has six production platforms with a total of 112 producing oil wells and 53 water and gas injection wells. BP said average daily production rate from the field is currently around 588,000 barrels per day. The field has produced 3.5 billion barrels of oil since the start of production in November 1997.