Constraint Control System Optimization for Water Injection

Summary

Newfield Exploration Company utilizes water injection to increase oil and gas production in their Uintah Basin field.  Maximizing water usage had been difficult because they shared water resources with local farmers who had variable water demands.  APCO added instrumentation and constraint-control optimization to ensure sufficient water flow to the farmers while maximizing water injection and thus, oil and gas production.

Customer Benefit

• Significantly increased water injection
• Improved relations with other water users
• Reduced per-gallon cost of water injection
• Improved reliability
• Quantifiable water injection totals

Technologies

• Constraint Control
• SCADAPack
• Wonderware
• GE MDS TransNET Radios

Solution

Newfield Gas and Exploration utilizes water injection to increase production from their oil and gas field near Myton, UT.  A large part of their injection water comes from water shares on a common irrigation line.  This meant that spring and summer irrigation usage from farmers on that water line would cause line water-pressures to vary wildly.  Consequently, it was extremely difficult for Newfield to manage their water injection without damaging pumps or harming relationships with local farmers.
 
APCO Inc was hired to optimize water usage to maximize water injection.  APCO engineers programmed constraint control technology into the water injection control system to maintain set water injection rates while monitoring and ensuring required water pipeline pressures.  As the water pressure dropped in the pipeline, the constraint controller would shut down injection pumps to increase pressure in the pipeline.  As the water pressure in the pipeline returned, the controller would restart injection pumps to ensure maximum water usage.
 
The resulting control ensured that the operating pumps always had sufficient suction pressure to safely operate.  In addition, at times when there weren’t any irrigation draws on the pipeline, Newfield was able to maximize their injection rates.  Because the system was not monitoring and intelligently controlling the water usage, Newfield was also able to exactly quantify water usage and determine if it was sufficient for their production needs.  Finally, since they weren’t starving the local farmers, they were able to maintain a positive local relationship to ensure that their operations could continue smoothly.