SPE WA-Lecture Series 8 March 2016: Waste Water Disposal: Strategic Direction for Operational Excellence

Waste Water Disposal (WWD) has been experienced for decades in Oil & Gas Industry. WWD is becoming more important operational component for many logic reasons: continuous upset-free performance of Plants, expensive surface treatment, excessive produced volumes, etc. Generally speaking, the disposal system starts at the plants sewage outlets, then settling/skimming tanks, booster pumps, injection pipelines, injection pumps, flowlines to disposal wells and finally monitoring wells. In most cases, all WWD system wells are defined as critical wells according to Well Reliability and Optimization Matrix and regulatory compliance. Malfunction of any of these facilities may lead to loss of profit (LPO) in terms of trains’ shutdown.

Water quality and surveillance results are subjected to Compliance agreements and should have regulatory Agencies approval, which necessitates coordination with other departments owning data and those delivering it to external Agencies. Monitoring volumes injected, discharge pressure, water quality and monitoring wells performance are a third Party responsibility that needs full supervision of the Operator to guarantee reliable data is delivered. Third laboratory, more sampling points with higher frequent sampling and splitting are of great value to secure reliable information.

Interface between WWD responsible Team and future projects is a key for successful planning in terms of defining water quality, needed pumping capacity, how many disposal and monitoring wells, where to drill and by when.

Lessons Learned:

• Multidisciplinary approach raises the level of WWD business awareness
• Injected waste water must be of good quality.
• Backwash procedures help to restore injectivity of the disposal wells
• Frequent surveillance on the monitoring and disposal wells
• Ensure good quality laboratory analyses of water samples.

Sameh Macary, Ph. D. Pet. Eng.

Sameh currently is an Industry Advisor with ECU in Perth. He was with Chevron Australia and Kazakhstan for 8 years as Production Engineering Advisor. Before Chevron, he worked as chief reservoir Engineer in IPR Group of Companies (Dallas based Co.) He did 8 years of consultancies with GUPCO (the biggest Egyptian JV with AMOCO, then BP) and 3 years with DCS-Schlumberger as part-time consultant. Dr. Macary was the Production Department Head and Petroleum Engineering Professor in Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute.

Sameh got his PE degree with Honor in 1981 from Cairo University where was appointed as instructor for two years in the Eng. Math & Physics Dept. Then he got M. Sc. (1985) and Ph. D. (1988) in Petroleum Eng. from Azerbaijan State University of Oil & Chemistry.

Dr. Macary served in SPE Egypt, WA & Atyrau Sections in almost all positions. He represented Egypt in the ME SPE Council, participated in organizing several SPE ATW and Conferences. He has 18 SPE Papers. In 2006, Dr. Macary was awarded the Regional Technical Award for Reservoir Description and Dynamics in the Middle East. He became a SPE Distinguished Lecturer for the season 2007-2008. He chaired SPE Atyrau Section for 3 years and currently is the SPE WA Technical Program Chairperson. He was awarded as The Outstanding SPE Section Chairman in the Russian/Caspian Region this year.

Note: Please note the new venue for the SPE lecture Series:   BGC Centre Conference Room, #28 The Esplanade, located on the corner of Howard and The Esplanade (entrance off Howard St). The Conference Room  is located to the left of Reveley’s Café,   and  it’s a separate entrance to the main foyer of BGC Centre.