A new method to evaluate integrated production system capacity in oil fields

Abstract

To improve the design and management of an integrated production system (IPS), a set of mathematical models and workflows are developed for evaluating the capacity of an IPS at steady-state conditions. Combining the conservation laws with applicable multiphase fluid and choke models, these mathematical models are solved to characterize the hydraulics of an integrated system of reservoir, wells, chokes, flowlines, and separator at steady state. The controllable variables such as well count, choke size and separator pressure are adjusted to optimize the performance of the IPS at a specific time. It is found that increasing the well count can increase the bulk flow rate of the production network, but too many wells may increase the manifold pressure, leading to decline of single-well production. Increasing the choke size can improve the capacity of the IPS. The production of the IPS is negatively correlated with the separator pressure. With increasing separator pressure and decreasing choke size, the increment of total fluid production (the capacity of IPS) induced by increasing well count decreases. Validation tests with field examples show a maximum absolute deviation is 1.5%, demonstrating the robustness and validity of the proposed mathematical models and workflows.