Correlating Flow Station Parameters with Oil Wells Performance

Abstract

Offshore production system assessment is very important to maintain and optimize wells performance including ESP, gas lift, natural flow wells, flow line network and de-bottlenecking. The oil production gain from optimization will add great value in maintaining production targets and increase the Maximum Sustained Capacity (MSC) which is the maximum production rate can be produced for stable period within a notice of not more than two months. Offshore optimization includes new facilities such as flow stations, gas lift capacity, introducing new ESP wells, laying down new flow lines and additional transmission lines. Production optimization changes warrant an update and reassessment of the production model used for optimization and de-bottleneck studies including the review and evaluation of the existing well & network models to develop a clear strategy and to update the production model with optimization. The optimal lifting rate according to the well level can be determined by varying the gas lifting rate and comparing its rate of change with the minimum economic rate of change which can be obtained during the ability tests for each well considering changing the gas lift injection rate to sense the impact on the production rate with the best increment to get within the given gas injection rate. In order to assist oil and gas field workers in daily activities and to optimize the time they spent checking and opening closed wells which is a tedious job especially during rough sea conditions and when there is no available means of transportation, a new way of tracking wells production throughout the flow lines pressure feeding the flow station are presented and examined in order to focus on some areas to regain the production loss due to wells shut in suffering from the back pressure exerted by other wells on the stream. Gathering data from several flow lines to build a database which will be much appreciated especially for offshore fields where there is no Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition "SCADA" Units during rough sea conditions and in emergency cases to overcome production loss.