Vertual metering as a tool for ESP-equipped wells monitoring

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to creating a virtual flow metering system (VFM). Proposed method is based on electric submersible pump system’s monitoring. Whole VFM market was analyzed with taking method’s relevance, possible and real industry applications into consideration. Created algorithm uses data that is regularly collected from oilfields and stored in corporate’s databases. Mainly used parameters are well’s construction, telemetry data from ESP system, pressure and temperature from different parts of the well, and available oil production data, divided by phases, that is obtained rarely and used for calibration. Suggested solution considers electric part of an ESP system and so it reveals possibility to estimate ESP degradation dynamics for liquid-gas mixture production restoring by using correction coefficients. Presented algorithm was tested on the Company’s oilfield. One well is shown as an example of method’s work, including all steps from data preprocessing to liquid production dynamics recovering. Also results of algorithm usage on several dozen wells on various oilfields are presented. As one of the main results approving the possibility to increase liquid production measurements frequency should be mentioned. Such possibility is based on using indirect operating parameters and recovering dynamics of model’s inner coefficients (e.g., ESP degradation), that make possible to estimate effectiveness of pump exploitation and possible optimization necessity. As another important result implementing of the algorithm into Company’s IT systems should be mentioned. Such implementation reveals possibility for monitoring a big amount of wells in fast and effective way