Exxonmobil Technology and Engineering Company

Exxonmobil Upstream Research Company

Mahsa Memarzadeh

Amr S El-Bakry

Curtis J Holub

Marco De Mattia

Justin A Gantt

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 for producing hydrocarbons in a gas lift well is disclosed. A gas lift rate of the well is monitored while producing hydrocarbons according to an initial gas lift performance curve. One or more well performance parameters for the well are monitored. Disturbances in the well are detected while monitoring the well performance parameters. Transience in the well is modeled. A new gas lift performance curve is derived based on the detected disturbances, the modeled transience, and the initial gas lift performance curve. An optimal allocation of gas lift is determined from the new gas lift performance curve. Hydrocarbons are produced using the determined optimal allocation of gas lift.

Opportunistic techniques for production optimization of gas-lifted wells

A method is provided for determining the frequency of a multi-rate well testing operation in a gas-lifted hydrocarbon well. A well performance characteristic of the well is monitored using single-rate well tests. The monitored well performance characteristic is compared to a current well model performance characteristic. If the monitored well performance characteristic differs from the current well model performance characteristic by less than a predetermined amount, an amount of gas is injected into the well based on the current well model performance characteristic. If the monitored well performance characteristic differs from the current well model performance characteristic by more than a predetermined amount, a multi-rate well test is initiated the results of the multi-rate well test are fitted to a revised well model performance characteristic, and an amount of gas is injected into the well based on the revised well model performance characteristic.

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Spring, TX, United States of America

Mahsa Memarzadeh