System Analytical Model to Estimate and Optimize Oil Well Performance

Abstract

The use of separated flow models to specify the vertical lift performance of an oil well is usually somewhat complex- due to the many equations and correlations involved in the determination of the required variables. Consequently, coding these models in the computer presents an extent of difficulty. In this study however, with the view of developing a computer model (DOBB) to perform nodal analysis for oil wells, an efficient algorithm was established to facilitate the determination of the operating pressure and liquid flow rate of oil wells (which is the point of intersection between the VLP and IPR curve). More so, Hagedorn Brown model was incorporated into the computer model to account for liquid hold ups and various flow regimes (excluding bubble flow regime) in the tubing string. The computer model developed in this study is equipped with the ability to determine fanning friction factor of the tubing string provided that the roughness of the pipe is known. Also, when the developed computer model was tested with some ranges of data points, nodal analysis plots were obtained from the different data points. Nonetheless, DOBB (a production engineering toolkit developed in this study) was proven to be efficient on the part of performing nodal analysis for oil wells.