Comprehensive Physics-Based Well Operations Surveillance
An onshore operator requested GATE Energy to develop a tool to allow them to quickly perform surveillance of their gas lift program to support the operations. The tool identifies the underperforming wells and ultimately leads to the field’s overall production optimization. The tool was designed to require minimum input data with allowing some missing data to be estimated but ultimately provide a comprehensive screening of the well performance and potential risks which may disrupt the production of the wells.
CHALLENGES
No real-time gas lift optimization is implemented.
No means to detect which gas lift valve is operating.
No permanent downhole gauge is installed.
No oil composition is available for some wells.
No means to detect any liquid loading potential.
No active monitoring of the fracture and reservoir performance.
No active measure of potential tubing leak.
No means to detect any flow restriction.
SOLUTION
GATE Energy developed a comprehensive well operations tool utilizing GATE’s proprietary simulator GATE Prho™ building blocks that, with one simulation run, allows the operator to:
Evaluate underperforming wells
Quantify potential production enhancement through gas lift optimization
Determine the operating gas lift valve
Evaluate liquid loading risk
Perform Rate Transient Analysis (RTA)
Generate the gas lift performance curve
List the potential well issues and provide the recommendations
Detect potential flow restriction
The output of the tool gives a current ‘snap-shot’ of any potential well issues and delivers initial recommendations. In the future, it’s easy to share the results with GATE engineers to further support with more thorough analysis, mitigation and remediation efforts.
It is important to note, prior to delivering the surveillance tool, GATE Energy conducted an extensive benchmarking study between the tool and the available field data to ensure it is representative of the actual field conditions..
TECHNICAL BENEFITS
Turnkey, physics-based well operations surveillance tool which allows the operator to closely monitor potential production enhancement real -time.
Simple to operate and takes less than about one man-hour to input minimal requirements.
In future, easy to share with GATE engineers to further support with more thorough analysis, mitigation and remediation efforts.
