CETCO Oilfield Services Company recently supplied water cleanup technology to a major operator, significantly reducing project cost and time. This goes to prove that yet again CETCO Oilfield Services’ innovative technology is continually benefiting organizations, both large and small.
When the operator recently drilled eight new wells for its new field, it turned to CETCO Oilfield Services for a cost-effective method of treating the annular returns produced during the clean up of the wells.
The well completion and drilling operations left various substances in the well annuli that would be brought to the surface once production commenced using gas lift. Drilling chemicals, spacer fluids, gels, biocides, oxygen scavengers and packer materials all had to be extracted before gas lifted production could commence.
To utilize gas lifted production, the operator previously had to collect the annular fluid in tote tanks for later onshore disposal. This had an estimated cost of $192,000 for shuttling the tote tanks and about $109,000 for onshore disposal, which at first seemed attractive. However, this approach slowed, making the wells gas lift capable by months only, leading to lost production and revenue. Additionally, this option has extra safety concerns with multiple lifts and extra logistic arrangements involved.
CETCO, however, was able to offer the operator an efficient and effective alternative – an offshore processing solution costing less than $100,000.
Following assessment of the project, CETCO devised a treatment package specifically to meet the operator’s requirements. The proposed solution consisted of a CETCO weirbox and a CETCO RFV 3000 absorption skid, containing CETCO’s CrudeSorb® technology and activated carbon (GAC) canisters.
The four compartment weirbox allowed CETCO to use gravity to separate hydrocarbons and some solids from the fluid before it passed into the RFV 3000 unit, which consists of two sock filter vessels and two adsorption media vessels.
CETCO took fluids from an offshore test separator into the weirbox. Water from the weirbox was then passed into the RFV 3000 unit for polishing. The sock filters removed solids particles to one micron. The CrudeSorb media then removed the majority of remaining oil and other organic materials before the carbon treatment finally polished the water to regulatory rates suitable for overboard discharge.
The CETCO Oilfield Services process proved very successful and resulted in significant cost savings and reduced well downtime. No onshore processing was required and the contaminated fluids did not have to be stored on the rig or shipped onshore.