Application of Low Pressure System at Balingian, Sarawak Brown Field; Candidate Selection and BY Field Case Study

Bayan (BY) is a brown field located in Sarawak region with over 25 years of production. Declining trend in field production resulting from rapidly declining reservoir pressure and increasing water production has prompted aggressive production enhancement activities to arrest further decline. Conventional gas lift method has been widely applied across the field and has provided reliable means of artificial lift to sustain production. However, wells with very low reservoir pressure were not able to sustain production even with gas lift due to the back pressure experienced in the production system. Low Pressure System (LPS) were implemented in two (2) out of four (4) drilling platforms in BY to sustain and increase the field production, reactivate idle wells and to manage the back pressure for the whole production system. Experience gathered from this implementation enable us to improve the candidate selection process and to share potential limitation imposed by the LPS system to operation. Actual BY LPS performance is shown here to illustrate the proven success in increasing the field production and unlocking some of BY reserves. The change in the production trend of well’s producing in current production system and after being tied to LPS will show the total achieved production gain which in BY case amounted to more than 1.5 million barrels in 4 years of operation.