1965 was the starting point for commercial oil production in the country. Since then more than 117 million tons of oil have been produced from the oil deposits of the Belarusian Polesye, and the way from mass discovery of oil fields, their development and achievement of maximum oil withdrawal up to natural production decline have been already passed.
The maximum level of annual oil production reached by “Belorusneft” in 1975 made 7,953,600 tons. The basic volume of production was obtained from the largest deposits: Rechitskoye, Ostashkovichskoye, Vishanskoye, Tishkovskoye and Yuzhno-Ostashkovichskoye. Since 1976 oil production has been declining and in 1997 it reached 1,822,000 tons. The deterioration of the structure of oil reserves was the key factor of the decline so as the basic deposits entered the final stage of their development. Replenishment of the resource base was undertaken mainly due to discovering small deposits the resources difficult to recover.
Stabilization of oil production
It was achieved by:
– a broad introduction of geological and technical measures over the working well stock (water-insulation works, inflow intensification, drilling of horizontal bores, hydraulic fracturing of formations, hydrochloric acid formation fracturing, optimization of the pumping equipment operation, implementation of oil recovery enhancement methods);
– bringing into development the deposits that were kept in conservation, where special attention is given to organization of all-year-round development of deposits with highly viscous oil;
– increase of the well stock by means of “reanimation” of earlier abandoned wells with by cutting second bores and drilling new wells;
– applying progressive equipment in oil production;
– organizing and activating the system of maintaining reservoir pressure in small deposits with low-permeability manifolds and applying block group pumping station (BGPS).
Oil production in Belarus is carried out by the Oil and Gas Production Department “Rechitsaneft”.
At present, 52 deposits are under development (47 deposits are on the balance of the “Production Association “Belorusneft”, 5 deposits are on the balance of “Belgeologiya”), the largest of which entered the closing stage and have high water cut of the products. In the beginning of 2011 the operation stock comprised 715 wells, including 77 flowing wells and 638 driven wells. Injection wells numbered 255.
The operation of the mechanized well stock is complicated by a number of factors providing the necessity of constant search for new technologies and techniques ensuring effective oil production focused on the increase of operation reliability of downhole and surface equipment. Therefore, in 1997 a program on increasing the time between failures of the driven wells downhole equipment was accepted. By the end of 2007 its implementation has enabled to achieve 1450 days between failures with oil well sucker rod pumping unit and 1820 days – with electrical submersible pumping system.
Since 1997 the Enterprise has been implementing a telemetering program for the oil production objects. Control and management of the oil wells equipped with the sucker rod pumping units is carried out by the telemetering system based on System 60 controllers. It enables both local and radio communication channels remote control of operation parameters of the downhole pumping and surface equipment, registration of a dynamometer chart of pump operations and other technical parameters used for automatic diagnostics of well productivity and protection of the well in case of deviation from the preset operating modes.
The system provides remote control and control of the oil well sucker rod pumping units, optimizing operation of the periodic well stock, reducing transportation expenses, energy saving and increasing the reliability of the equipment.
Control and management of the wells equipped with the electrical submersible pumping system is carried out with the help of the telemetric system including submersible equipment “SKAD-3003”. The system registers the key operation parameters of submersible equipment and “Moscad” controller, by means of which the data is transmitted by a radio channel to the central unit. This system provides remote control of electrical submersible pumping system working parameters in real time mode and automatic protection of the unit in case of deviation from the preset operating modes.
Basic objects of oil extraction (group metering station, block water injection pumping stations, block group pumping stations, reservoir pressure maintenance wells, etc.) are equipped with modern telemetering systems, which provide considerably reduced service cost, allow to immediately respond to emergency situations and to improve the quality of production accounting.
