Diagnosing the Health of an Oil Well

Q: What is the correlation between PEMEX’s production needs and your service portfolio? A: We support PEMEX in the gathering of production information with the explicit purpose of enabling more successful decision-making in the areas of well management and reservoir management, specifically with the objective of increasing productivity. Our services are essential to PEMEX’s priority to reverse its production decline as quickly as possible to achieve the goals set forth by the new administration. PEMEX is aware of this. It has significantly reversed its previous trend of limiting its investment in well management services like those we provide. This has resulted in a healthy and positive relationship between PEMEX and us and also between SENER and us. The leadership at these two institutions understands the degree to which we can support their necessary focus on mature field engineering.

Q: How do you structure your supply of multiphase meters as a technological service that boosts productivity?

A: First, we make it clear that our commitment is to the optimization of our client’s operations, in this case PEMEX. Our ultimate goal is to add value to its production strategy. We offer options, of course; if PEMEX happens to be only looking for equipment at a certain time, we can help them identify and select the component that best fits the needs of the project or worksite in question. Given the varied types of crude and gas that are produced at PEMEX upstream worksites, and the tricky way in which they must be produced, sometimes simultaneously, multiphase meters can have any number of extremely convenient functions. However, if PEMEX decides that it needs a well management service rather than a component, we approach our duties differently. The multiphase meters are then no longer part of its CAPEX, since we assume the cost as part of our OPEX. We have applied both of these contracting modalities not only to PEMEX but also with the first private operators that entered the industry a decade ago with integrated service contracts, such as Petrofac and Grupo Diavaz. Either way, we take into account that the oil and gas industry tends to be rather conservative in its adoption of new technologies, so we are careful to introduce this as an extremely useful but also proven and mature technology. PEMEX has used it for over 12 years; we pioneered its introduction.

Surpetrol is a global provider of well management and optimization services with over 200,000 successful well-testing operations with multiphase meters. The company offers datainterpreting expertise to lengthen the lifetime of a well.