AccessESP, a provider of rigless electric submersible pump (ESP) conveyance solutions for the oil industry, demonstrated its rigless ESP conveyance system in a pump swap for an operator on the North Slope of Alaska.

In two days, through a live well intervention, the AccessESP system enabled retrieval of the existing ESP pump and the install of a new ESP pump using only a slickline unit, lubricator, and a crane. Surface diagnostics determined that the permanent magnet motor was functional, therefore replacement was not required.

In this case, the ESP pump had not failed but was replaced with an optimized pump. To resize a conventional ESP pump, the operator would mobilize a workover rig, kill the well, pull the tubing and ESP, and then replace the ESP and rerun the tubing. The costs associated with the intervention and downtime inherent in this approach can be substantial, the company says. However, by utilizing a standard slickline unit, lubricator, and crane, the AccessESP rigless conveyance system reduced the cost, time and risk associated with ESP resizing, the company says.

AccessESP says the operator saved around $2 million in workover costs by using the slickline deployed system.