Field Evaluation of an Offshore Pumping System

Abstract

Technical Brief 5: An evaluation was performed on one of the largest offshore facilities belonging to PEMEX Exploration and Production due to forecasts predicting that future crude oil production will contain heavier oils. The primary function of the evaluation was to assist PEMEX in determining if the facility’s pumps needed to be upgraded. In addition, several of the centrifugal pumps of the plat form had been recently replaced with screw pumps. Therefore, the evaluation was performed in three parts: first, the remaining centrifugal pumps were evaluated in the field at available testing conditions; second, a hydraulic analysis of the network was conducted to predict the system performance with heavier oils; and third, an interactive pump simulator was developed to train operators on the new screw pump equipment. This presentation/paper will focus on the first step, the field evaluation of the centrifugal pumps, and the remaining steps will be discussed briefly.