Lukoil fit for the future

London – Lukoil Western Siberia is the largest unit of the Russian oil company Lukoil. This production facility in Siberia had commissioned third-party water injection pumps and had upgraded them with Sulzer Pumps technology in order to maintain oil well pressure.

During the process of oil production, these pumps inject water back into the reservoir to increase pressure and thereby stimulate production.

The injected water increases the pressure in the reservoir, and it displaces oil from the reservoir, pushing it towards the well.

Water injection increases the percentage of oil that can be extracted from a reservoir and keeps the well flowing longer.

The 46 water injection pumps at this facility needed upgrading, as they had been produced in the mid 1980s and had an average power rating of 1300kW. Sulzer Pumps performed an engineered retrofit that included a change of the casing.

The new casing is based on that of the Sulzer MD pump range. These are high pressure stage-casing pumps with a modular design that allows changes in the number of pump stages according to the specific client requirements.

The retrofitted pumps have 11 to 15 stages depending on the final pressure they have to deliver.

With this specific adaption of the pumps to the actual process conditions, the engineers of Sulzer Pumps were able to realise energy savings of 95 000 000 kWh annually, which is a saving of about 18%.

These savings are equivalent to a CO2 reduction of 30,000 tonnes per year, assuming a carbon footprint of 0.316 kg/kWh.

The Lukoil retrofit led to a substantial annual reduction of power consumption and operating costs, which translated into a return on investment of less than two years.

Lukoil also benefited from improved reliability of the pumps. As a result of the mechanical upgrade, the mean time between repairs (MTBR) increased from one to at least three and up to six years.

For more information on the full Sulzer Pumps range visit: www.sulzer.com