Publications

South Mahakam (SMK) surface facilities were designed and built at a capacity of 250 MMscfd as defined in Plan of Development. Development sequences were arranged to manage field natural decline in order to keep South Mahakam keep producing at the maximum capacity. After drilling, it was found the wells’ performance were much higher than calculated. Consequently, all the potential could not be produced due to surface facilities limitation. Reviewing South Mahakam capacity, bottlenecks were found on individual well facility limitation, safety system set point and pipeline capacity. Some of the low-cost efforts/modifications were applied sequentlly to increase production capacity from 250 MMscfd up to 356 MMscfd as follows: 1. Debottleneck SMK-Process area (PPA) pipeline by reviewing pipeline capacity (max.limitation at erosional velocity) in steps, succeeded to increase pipeline capacity from 250 MMscfd to 350 MMscfd. 2. Well's choke modification by replacing internal part to gain higher capacity. Observed gain from this modification was 5-10 MMscfd/well. 3. Increasing Process Safety Valve (PSV )capacity by swapping orifice from "dead" well. Estimated gain from this step was 10 MMscfd/well. 4. Safety system review, as part of Management of Change procedure, was done to increase platform capacity by resetting Pressure Switch High High (PSHH) set point. This review was performed to ensure the new set point, that was higher than the original one, would not jeopardize overall safety system and logic. Set point increase of 4 barg succeeded to improve platform production capacity by 10-15 MMscf in proper and safe way. 5. Drag Reducing Agent (DRA) injection to pipeline, succeeded to reduce 5 barg backpressure or equal to 15 MMscfd additional gas. All of the efforts mentioned above were studied and implemented in relatively short period of time at a low cost and succeeded in boosting SMK production up to 356 MMscfd, highly appreciated for the great collaboration works between many disciplines in Field Operation, Engineering and Supply Chain. All the debottlenecking method above can be used partially or all-in-one by any fields that expect to increase existing production capacity at low cost without jeopardizing the safety aspects.