Exxonmobil Technology and Engineering Company

Justin A Gantt

Amr S El-Bakry

Curtis J Holub

Mahsa Memarzadeh

Neeraj R Dani

Feng Xiao

Zachary H Borden

The methods disclosed herein are directed to an automated method for monitoring performance of a well in a hydrocarbon reservoir for continuous monitoring of well test production data for a plurality of well system performance parameters, trending actual performance parameter deviations from a well system model, and determining most probable root cause(s) of the performance parameter deviations based on the trend of the deviations of a plurality of parameters for an outflow component of a well performance model and a plurality of parameters inflow component of a well performance model. The method automatically notifies an operator of detected root causes of the performance degradation, and further may perform corrective action in the well system based on at least one root cause of the deviation determined by the well performance model.

Method for performing well performance diagnostics

A method of detecting and mitigating flow instabilities, such as slugging, in hydrocarbon production wells. Real-time production data pertaining to each well is are retrieved. Using the production data, patterns of flow instability are identified therein. A numerical model of transient and thermal multiphase flow in each well is generated. Well test data is are retrieved from a database. The numerical model is calibrated using the well test data. Using the calibrated numerical model, a parametric study is performed to determine how input parameters affect at least one of stability and performance of the wells. Results of the parametric study are queried to determine a type of flow instability and to determine operating conditions to improve performance of the wells. An advisory is provided to a user to change operating conditions of one or more of the wells, to improve stability and/or performance of one or more of the wells.

Detecting and mitigating flow instabilities in hydrocarbon production wells

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St. John's, Canada

Justin A Gantt