No. 2, 2009
Dmitry Mikhailov
KEY ELEMENT OF OIL PRODUCTION
Innovation policy occupies the main position in the fruitful activities of RITEK
The specific feature of oil production in Russia consists today in the fact that the share of active reserves is constantly falling while that of reserves that are difficult to access is rising, these now constituting about 60-70% of the resource base. Newly discovered fields are often characterized by low oil content indicators. RITEK, which belongs to the LUKOIL Group, is successfully resolving these problems, thanks to innovative projects ensuring high returns on oil production.
Based on a systemic approach
In 1992, when RITEK was founded, the company's main aim was to create a competitive environment for all foreign service companies and restore the fund of inactive wells at Russian oil fields.
The experience of successfully fulfilling these tasks and forming the necessary production capacity allowed RITEK to adopt a strategic resolution to achieve the status of a natural resource use company and to acquire its own field and sector licenses. The company now holds 32 fields.
The characteristics of the fields acquired and developed by the company - low productivity, complex geological structure and reserves that are difficult to recover - dictate active introduction of innovative oil production methods.
As of today, RITEK uses over 60 of its own and outside innovative technologies and development systems to produce over 40% of the total amount of oil.
"The innovation process is carried out in RITEK on four planes," explains RITEK's Deputy General Director for Science and Innovation Vasily Kokorev. "On the first plane, the company is engaged in seeking problems of the industry, focusing on development of difficult oil. On the second plane, priority problems are selected from the total list, ones that might be resolved today using available scientific achievements and, possibly, even fundamentally new developments, as well as available equipment - either Russian or of foreign manufacture, which need to be put together to create a ready-made production process. The third plane consists in research and development work and study of the selected priority. And finally, on the fourth plane, comes experimental industrial introduction and transfer into industrial work."
Using new technologies
In accordance with this four-plane approach, RITEK is today implementing several priority programs. In particular, these are water-gas and heated steam methods for working the seam, which currently hold the leading positions among secondary oil production methods.
Gas flooding is fundamentally new technology for working oil fields, a combination of the advantages of gas and water and exclusion of their shortcomings. Under the conditions in Western Siberia, on new oil fields where the factor of oil recovery with water is low, use of this technology allows recovery of oil from the seam to be doubled.
Heat and gas methods for developing fields occupy the first and second places in the world in terms of the volume of oil produced by methods for increasing the oil recovery factor.
Specialists at RITEK have found a way to combine these two leading technologies in a single technical and technological cycle producing a number of new effects that enhance the general positive results and greatly reduce the initial capital investments required and operating costs.
About three tons of additional oil are obtained per ton of Ritin used, this being a highly effective polymer-gel reagent for raising oil recovery from seams, which is produced by the company at its own enterprise RITEK-ENPTs in the Moscow Region. The average operational benefit of applying this technology amounts to over 1,000 tons per well operation and, in some cases, reaches 10,000 tons of additionally produced oil. The average payback period for the costs of applying the company's oil production technology in Russia is 1 to 3 months and in countries supplying oil exclusively at world prices - just a few weeks.
Use of advanced drilling technologies allows RITEK to cut well construction times and to raise their productivity. For instance, in 2004, RITEK started drilling horizontal wells on the Sredne-Khulymskoye field, located in the Nadym District of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. The program was implemented together with the Schlumberger company. In 2004, three wells were drilled with a horizontal shaft of 800-900 meters. At the beginning of 2005, another two wells were drilled. The results of the drilling of these wells demonstrated the high efficiency of the technology. RITEK is currently continuing to introduce a technology for drilling extended horizontal shafts (300-400 meters) on the second field developed by the company in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area - the Sandibinskoye. This approach is highly effective from the point of view of both attaining maximum oil recovery factors and financial efficiency.
For efficient development of multi-seam fields, a selective completion instrument has been developed for wells. On a multi-seam field, the technology makes it possible to exploit either all seams at the same time or selectively, in any combination: leave one in operation, switch off only one, leaving the others in operation, that is, according to the results of measurements through the smart well, the company's specialists can regulate change in the work of the seams.
Focus on information technologies
At the moment, work is under way at RITEK on a priority innovative program called "Creation of the design of a smart field on the basis of development and introduction of multifunctional fiber-optic sensors and instruments." The main aim of the project is to improve the quality of the management of oil field development by means of a justified choice and optimization of management decisions and their fulfillment. Introduction of the program will make it possible to obtain quality information about the work of the seam, well and above-ground production equipment in real time for the purpose of cutting management decision-making times and improving its quality.
The initial stage in setting up a "smart field" system is to create and apply modern means for measuring and transmitting information about production process parameters using fiber optics. At the moment, RITEK is developing fiber-optic sensors, instruments for measuring pressure sensitive to thousandths of an atmosphere and for measuring temperature sensitive to thousandths of a degree.
Fiber-optic instruments do not require an autonomous power supply, since the instruments and the information carriers are powered by the light flow. The work of hundreds of sensors located at different depths and measuring different flow parameters may be powered through a single optical fiber, so rational automation of production process control might bring this industrial technological complex up to the level of a smart system capable of monitoring in real time and making rational decisions to change the operating regime of well and above-ground equipment within the bounds set by the projects.
Since 2003, work has been under way within the company to create an electronic database of oil and gas technologies for the purpose of forming an industry information resource for enhancing the efficiency of decision-making, raising the level of readiness and expanding the professional outlook of oil and gas business specialists. The oil and gas technology database provides an opportunity for rapidly accessing a systematized base of Russian and foreign knowledge, technologies and technical means.
The database includes information about over 500 Russian and foreign organizations promoting their output on the Russian market for oil and gas technologies and equipment and in the order of 6,000 traditional and state-of-the-art elements of technologies (including methods, equipment and reagents).
The oil and gas technology database's information and search system allows technologies to be selected for raising oil recovery from seams and overhaul of wells, proceeding from the effectiveness of their use for specific purposes and the aggregate of geological and technical conditions at a specific well.
Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce oil without using innovative technologies, since oil companies' reserves are being formed more and more actively out of difficult oil. In terms of the number of modernized approaches developed and introduced, RITEK is the undoubted leader in Russia's oil and gas industry.
