Key Initiatives Improve Production Testing Performance, Deepwater West Africa

Abstract Since 1996, ExxonMobil has conducted an extensive deepwater exploration / appraisal program in West Africa. In an effort to achieve improvement in production testing performance, ExxonMobil's West Africa Deepwater Drill Team pursued key initiatives to deliver quality well test operational results. These initiatives included performing effective long-term and near-term planning, highgrading equipment quality control and inspection practices, making appropriate use of selective new technology, enhancing standardized procedures by capturing lessons learned and best practices, performing rig-site engineering supervision of production testing operations, and communicating captured follow-up recommendations to service contractors. To execute these continuous improvement initiatives, a single dedicated test engineer was assigned to plan and oversee all West Africa well testing operations. As a result of this increased focus, the average non-productive time (NPT) per test has been reduced from approximately 30% to 6% and the overall test time has been reduced by about 40%. The methods and resources used to achieve these improvements are discussed in detail in this paper.