Operations are underway to increase oil production at North Yaran Oilfield in the southern Khuzestan Province.
According to Shana, the Oil Ministry’s official news agency, as part of the plan to take advantage of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques, an electric submersible pump (ESP), an efficient artificial-lift method for lifting moderate to high volumes of fluids from wellbores, was installed in one of North Yaran’s wells for the first time this week.
ESPs are quiet, safe and sanitary for operations in an offshore and environmentally sensitive area. They permit the use of minimum space for subsurface controls and associated production facilities.
The oilfield’s production has reportedly fallen, which is expected to regain production in 10 days and be prepared for raising oil recovery.
ESP is the first pump of its kind to be installed in the West Karun region, an oil-rich region in the southern Khuzestan Province that includes several large oilfields, including Azadegan, Yaran and Yadavaran, with the first two divided into north and south projects.
Arash Baqerzadeh, director of North Yaran’s development plan, said plans call for installing ESPs on 10 of the field’s wells by the end of the current fiscal year (March 20, 2019) to compensate for the loss in output.
Production from the first North Yaran well started in 2013, with the field's development having made an 85% progress. However, its development plan was launched in 2016 with the goal of producing up to 30,000 barrels of oil per day.
Output reached 30,000 barrels per day from the North Yaran field last year, but plans are in place to triple the output using EOR techniques. Production at the field's southern flank began in November 2017 at a rate of 10,000 bpd and is due to gradually rise to 25,000 bpd.
North Yaran has more than 900 million barrels of in-place oil, with an API degree of between 16 and 18, which puts the field's output among Iran's lighter crude blends.
It is located 130 kilometers off the provincial capital Ahvaz, close to the Iraqi border.
The West Karun block is estimated to have 65 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Raising production from joint oilfields is one of the main priorities of the Oil Ministry.
"The National Iranian Oil Company intends to unify the northern and southern sections of Yaran Oilfield into one project," Homayoun Kazemeyni, the head of the field's development plan at Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company said in January.
