Development of a Field Mobile Standard of the 2nd Category as a Tool for Verifying Well Production Measuring Equipment

Abstract

In recent years, in the oil production industry there is a tendency of mass use of stationary multiphase metering units for determining oil, water, and associated gas flow rates in the recoverable well production. Automated group metering units, allowing to cover the whole group of wells in rotation metering mode, became widespread. The necessity of equipping wells with individual or group measuring devices is dictated, first of all, by the economic tasks of improving oil recovery factor and production optimization. In these conditions, the task of periodic verification of stationary measuring devices in the field with the help of mobile standards-measuring devices of higher accuracy class becomes urgent. The standard’s mobility and the need to work in the field with fluids of different composition significantly complicates the task of creating such a device. The practicality and economy of the created units first of all depends on a choice of a measuring method determining the design of the unit. This article analyzes the existing types of equipment for measuring oil, gas, and water consumption at the oil production wells. Showing the main advantages and disadvantages of each of them, this paper proves the necessity of using complex solutions based on different physical principles to improve the accuracy of measurements. The authors have proposed a combined scheme of a mobile standard of the 2nd category with a dynamic method for measuring the phase rates at the core. The unit performs a multi-stage partial separation of the input multiphase flow into liquid and gas phases and determines the fractions of water and oil in the liquid stream using a hydrostatic-type mixture composition analyzer. In addition, this article indicates the ways of increasing the accuracy of the measuring installation.