Effective Electrical Submersible Pump Management Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Artificial lift plays an important role in petroleum industry to sustain production flowrate and to extend the lifespan of oil wells. One of the most popular artificial lift methods is Electric Submersible Pumps (ESP) because it can produce high flowrate even for wells with great depth. Although ESPs are designed to work under extreme conditions such as corrosion, high temperatures and high pressure, their lifespan is much shorter than expected. ESP failures lead to production loss and increase the cost of replacement, because the cost of intervention work for ESP is much higher than for other artificial lift methods, especially for offshore wells. Therefore, the prediction of ESP failures is highly valuable in oil production and contributes a lot to the design, construction and operation of oil wells. The contribution of this study is to use 3 machine learning algorithms, which are Decision Tree, Random Forest and Gradient Boosting Machine, to build predictive models for ESP lifespan while using both dynamic and static ESP parameters. The results of these models were compared to find out the most suitable model for the prediction of ESP life cycle. In addition, this study also evaluated the influence factor of various operating parameters to forecast the most impact parameters on the duration of ESP. The results of this study can provide a better understanding of ESP behavior so that early actions can be realized to prevent potential ESP failures.