Maximizing Gas Production Using In-House Software-GIPS

Abstract

Abstract The expansion in recent years of domestic oil and natural gas production has profound implications for the supply of energy in the twenty-first century. It has reignited calls for the nation to achieve "energy independence. There is no doubt a surge in the domestic natural gas production with tremendous opportunities. Driven by innovations in drilling and completion techniques, development of oil and natural gas reserves is one of the most rapidly growing trends in the world. Gas is used extensively for electricity generation and with the increasing demand, it is always a challenge to bridge the supply and demand gap. Maximizing the daily gas production rates and ensuring continuous supply of gas to the downstream industry is critical for the economy. Unlike crude oil, the biggest challenge in the gas production it that it cannot be stored in storage tanks. Also a huge infrastructure is required to transport this gas from the source to the required destination where it has to be processed for utilization. Meanwhile carrying out the periodic preventive maintenance activities on the gas wells, production facilities, flow lines and various instrumentations is essential too. Furthermore, some downhole reservoir data is needed periodically for reservoir management purposes to estimate wells potentials. During all these routine maintenance or reservoir monitoring activities, wells and plants are shut-in which results in production or injection loss hence translating in an extensive loss of cash and revenue due to the wells or facilities unavailability. This paper highlights the work progress and then the lessons learned during each step of the development of the software in order to meet and maximize the gas production demand considering all the hidden factors which are adversely affecting the overall production performance.