OREANDA-NEWS. August 10, 2016. PJSC Ukrnafta plans to increase oil production from existing wells through modernization of its extraction equipment. With new technologies, the company will develop operational stratums at the existing wells more efficiently.

In light of these plans, Ukrnafta recently restarted the annual Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) workgroup meeting, where specialists from the assets and the Ivano-Frankivsk Technical Institute met to share the performance metrics of their ESP wells, share lessons learned from operations and  discuss challenges specific to their region. With the Institute's support, there were over 100 wells identified for either deepening existing ESP units or deploying higher capacity units at deeper levels. 

Already three systems have been deployed at Dolynanaftogaz wells in March-June with total incremental production reaching more than 50 t/d with a cumulative production of over 2 ktons for 2 months, relative to a conservative estimate of 9 t/d.

A tender for 22 ESP units has recently been concluded with a conservative estimate of incremental cumulative production for a year of operation to be roughly around 15 ktons.  The Company completed relevant tendering procedures and chose equipment suppliers that will deliver new systems in September-October.  The timing of project is covering 2016-2017.

A similar workshop is planned for the Sucker Rod Pumps (SPR) this month. 

Mavriky Kalugin, Ukrnafta EVP – Upstream: “Ukrnafta management is fully supportive of the renewed exchange of experiences, ideas, lessons learnt and rebuilding personal relationships to enable rapid dissemination of important information across the production units to significantly improve overall production efficiency.” 

Ukrnafta is maturing other projects to increase production efficiency which includes hydraulic fracture stimulation, sidetracking idle wells, optimizing gas production, revitalizing existing waterfloods, and new drilling.

Mark Rollins, the CEO of Ukrnafta: “Our Company is currently going through a difficult period and we are not able to sufficiently invest into new drilling and field development. But we do our best with what we have, upgrading existing facilities to improve efficiency and to increase oil extraction. With ongoing improvements, we believe to reach significant increase in oil production in the future”.