Abstract
There have been some correlations in the literature to predict the gas and liquid flow rate through wellhead chokes under subcritical flow conditions. The majority of these empirical correlations have been developed based on limited production data sets that were collected from a small number of fields. Therefore, these correlations are valid within the parameter variation ranges of those fields. If such correlations are used elsewhere for the prediction of the subcritical choke flow performance of the other fields, significant errors will occur. Additionally, there are only a few empirical correlations for sub-critical choke flow performance in high rate gas condensate wells. These led the authors to develop a new empirical correlation based on a wider production data set from different gas condensate fields in the world; 234 production data points were collected from a large number of production wells in twenty different gas condensate fields with diverse reservoir conditions and different production histories. A non-linear regression analysis method was applied to their production. The new correlation was validated with a new set of data points from some other production wells to confirm the accuracy of the established correlation. The results show that the new correlation had minimal errors and predicted the gas flow rate more accurately than the other three existing models over a wider range of parameter variation ranges.
Highlights
Wellhead choke is a primary piece of equipment used in the multiphase production of oil and gas wells
It is worth mentioning that the flow rate of the choke is not always linearly proportional to the pressure drop across the choke, and the relation between the flow rate and the pressure drop across the choke could be concave compared to the straight line in the Gilbert formula
The second objective of this study is to extend the works that were conducted on the development of a set of correlations on individual choke categories [19,21]
Summary
Wellhead choke is a primary piece of equipment used in the multiphase production of oil and gas wells. Wellhead chokes are mainly used in the oil and gas industry for the following reasons [1,2,3,4]: . To regulate oil and gas production and keep the wellhead pressure to an acceptable level to avoid any damage to the formation. To avoid any possible water or gas coning due to excessive pressure drawdown. To produce a well at a stable production rate at the most efficient level. Since the production of oil and gas is extremely sensitive to choke size, it is significantly important to model choke performance and select optimal choke size as accurately as possible.
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