Evaluation of PhaseWatcher Multiphase Flow Meter (MPFM) Performance in Sour Environments

Flow rate measurement uncertainty analysis is a key methodology for addressingproduction allocation, reservoir performance optimization, operationalquestions, and regulatory issues. Until now, no unique collection of procedureshas been available to estimate the total system uncertainty associated withmultiphase flow meters, well test separator systems, and the pipelinesconnecting them, especially for commingled flow configurations. A tool to dothis would assist industry stakeholders in understanding the uncertaintyassociated with fiscal allocation of production, reservoir management, andforecasting processing facility operations. With this need in mind, and the support of several offshore operators and DOEthrough the RPSEA program, the team developed a software tool with auser-friendly interface for predicting total network uncertainties for systemswith subsea multiphase flow meters (MPFMs). The tool accounts for meteroperating conditions, in-situ pressure - volume - temperature (PVT) properties, system configurations, and flowline/riser effects. It is anticipated that thistool will be attractive to all industry stakeholders, in order to moreequitably allocate production and optimize reservoir performance. Thebackground of the tool's development, an overview of use cases, and lessonslearned from the effort will be presented. Introduction Flow rate measurement uncertainty analysis is a key methodology for addressingproduction allocation, reservoir performance optimization, operational issues, and regulatory requirements. Unfortunately, no unique collection of proceduresis currently available for predicting the total system uncertainty associatedwith multiphase flow meters (both subsea and topside), well test separatorsystems, and the pipelines connecting them, especially for commingled flowconfigurations. This lack of tools for understanding and predicting uncertaintycauses significant problems for all parties involved, especially for fiscalallocation of production, with reservoir management, and with forecasts foroperation of process facilities. A software tool with a user-friendly interface for predicting total networkuncertainties for systems with subsea multiphase flow meters (MPFMs) wasdeveloped as part of RPSEA 07121-1301. The tool accounts for meter operatingconditions, in-situ PVT properties, system configurations and flowline/risereffects. It is anticipated that this tool will find use among vendors, oilindustry operating companies and regulatory agencies, in order to moreequitably allocate production and optimize reservoir performance. Motivation Accurate flow rate measurement has become a critical issue for the oilindustry, especially for offshore and subsea developments. Multiphase flowmeasurements are traditionally made using a well test separator andsingle-phase metering system topside. In recent years, multiphase flow metermeasurements topside and subsea have been accepted for well tests, when themeters are operated within meter specifications and near calibrated conditions. However, no reliable uncertainty models that couple multiphase flow in flowlines with the separator and meter uncertainty under flowing conditions existeduntil now.

Objectives/Scope: During the period of two years the difference between sum of daily oil flow rate measurements of each oil production well using multiphase flow meter (MPFM) and cumulative daily oil production rate measured by custody transfer meter increased overall by 5%. For some wells inaccuracy of MPFM liquid rate measurement could reach 30-50%. The main goal of this research was to improve the accuracy of multiphase flow meter production rate measurements. Methods, Procedures, Process: More than 80 oil production wells were involved in the research, more than 100 flow rate tests were carried out. Machine learning methods such as supervised learning algorithms (linear and nonlinear regressions, method of gradient descent, finite differences algorithm, etc.) have been applied coupled with Integrated production modelling tools such as PROSPER and OpenServer in order to develop a function representing correlation between MPFM parameters and flow rate error. Results, Observations, Conclusions: The difference between cumulative daily oil production rate measured by custody transfer meter and multiphase flow meters decreased to 0.5%. The solution has been officially applied at the oil field and saved USD 500K to the Company. The reliability of the function was then proved by the vendor of MPFMs. Novel/Additive Information: For the first time machine learning algorithms coupled with Integrated Production modelling tools have been used to improve the accuracy of multiphase flow meter production rate measurements.

Accurate metering of flow rates and prediction of water breakthrough are important issues in offshore oil production. The multiphase flow rates can be found for instance from frequent well testing, from multiphase flow meters, or from software simulations. Multiphase flow meters are very expensive and so are single-well tests, especially in cases with long tiebacks. On the contrary, software simulations are cheap, they can be made accurate, and simulations can usually be based on existing sensors. Also, software is easy to install, operate, and maintain compared to hardware multiphase meters. In this article we describe the main components needed in a flexible software system for flow metering that can handle sparsely instrumented production facilities. Several sources of implicit information are pointed out, and a tuning strategy that avoids single-well tests is described. We also present examples that show the power of advanced simulations in situations that are not well handled by multiphase flow meters and standard software because of very low flow rates. What makes the situation in the examples even harder is that: There is no available information about the choke, the bottom hole sensors fail, and the temperature measurements are influenced by the seawater temperature. Despite this, good results are obtained. Introduction The offshore oil industry is facing a market where the number of brown fields is growing, and where more and more of the green fields are marginal fields. In addition, many of the new findings are on deep water. These facts all point in the direction of more production networks with long tiebacks, a stronger need for limiting the number of expensive well tests, and a push towards minimizing OPEX in general. The need for reliable monitoring of the production from each well in a production network is therefore continuously increasing. Furthermore, reservoirs may have more than one owner, whereas the various owners may share the same infrastructure and production facilities. In such cases reliable production monitoring is of course highly demanded. A software system for flow rate estimation may satisfy the above needs. Software is relatively cheap, and both installation and usage can be made very easy. Furthermore, software is easily maintained and supervised from remote, whereas hardware, such as a multiphase flow meter, usually needs to be maintained on the site. This is an important issue since many larger green fields are far away from where many of the oil companies' expertise traditionally is situated. Remote access can easily be obtained using standard web browsers and internet technology. However, if the instrumentation is sparse or inaccurate most software systems will not give reliable rate estimates. In this article we will look at how to deal with such problems. We will present the main building blocks for a flexible software system that can handle almost any production network configuration. We also show how inaccurate measurements and what may look like useless information may contribute to good rate estimates.

Over the last decade, the development and deployment of in-line multiphase flow metering systems has been a major focus worldwide. Accurate measurement of multiphase flow in the oil and gas industry is difficult because it occurs in wide range of flow regimes and multiphase meters do not generally perform well under the intermittent slug flow conditions which commonly occur in oil production. A novel ultrasonic multiphase metering concept has been proposed and investigated which measures the flow rates of the liquid and gas phases from ultrasonic measurements made in two different flow regimes – partially separated and homogeneous — in the same measurement system and fuses the data from the different flow regimes to obtain improved overall measurement accuracy. The system employs a partial gas/liquid separation using a T-junction configuration and a combination of Doppler and cross correlation. The partially separated flow regimes uses ultrasonic cross correlation measurement for the liquid flow measurement which has gas entrained within it. The homogeneous regime employs ultrasonic Doppler method. This approach has been tested on water/air flows on a 50mm facility in the Department of Process and Systems Engineering. The liquid and gas flowrate measurements using the proposed techniques were compared with a reference measurement and good agreements between these two measurements were obtained with error ranging from ± 2% and 10%, respectively. Such a performance offers the potential for an in-line multiphase flowmeter with improved performance.

The difficulties associated with producing heavy oil have discouraged operators from developing the Atlanta field in the Santos basin offshore Brazil, despite more than 1.5 billion bbl of oil in place. The water depth in the area is more than 1,500 m, which makes operations even more challenging. Because Brazil has set aggressive production targets for the next decade, new interest has been given to the field, and a consortium of E&P operators began to reassess the field. Well deliverability and test data are crucial to field development planning. Well test operations were planned with a multienergy gamma ray and venturi multiphase flow meter used as contingency. During the well test operations, the foaming propensity of the produced oil made it almost impossible to distinguish an interface between liquid and gas in the separator or tank, rendering the standard equipment useless. Only in the second test were some tank measurements available. The measurement principle used in this multiphase flow meter, however, is not sensitive to foam or emulsion because they respond to the atomic-level composition of the different components of the mixture independently of their arrangement, providing accurate flow rate measurements. We detail the behavior of the multiphase flow meter during the well tests in the Atlanta field and the challenges caused by foaming oil. In the case of standard oils, the measurements are not sensitive to the viscosity value. However, in the case of high viscosities which lead to low Reynolds numbers, the viscosity value can drastically affect the results. In this case, some solvents were injected during the well test to reduce the liquid viscosity, and we present the consequences on the multiphase flow meter. We also compare the multiphase flow meter results to the gas/oil ratio measured in the laboratory on downhole samples from the same reservoir, to the water cut measured manually during the operations and to the tank measurements. Finally, we present some recommendations on the use of multiphase flow meters for heavy oil well tests.

Representative reservoir fluid sampling and characterization has become increasingly important over the years. With exploration, appraisal and development activities moving into marginal fields and more challenging environments, accurate fluid characterization becomes more critical. This can be said for the formation tester, DST and multiphase sampling and fluid characterization environments with the most challenging area in recent years arguably being the multiphase environment. Multiphase flow meters have been accepted for several years now by the industry. Their use in permanent or well testing applications has been growing rapidly. In many cases, multiphase flow meters have replaced the separator for flow rate evaluation, but some fundamental needs from the client were not addressed properly, such as the ability to collect representative samples for phase-behavior characterization. Moreover, metering accuracies has been questionable in many cases (at very high GVF or in wet gas conditions, high pressure or /and high temperature).This paper focus on the Multiphase Active Sampling Device Service (MASS), a fluid sampling and analysis service that can be provided with the Vx multiphase metering technology with the objective of collecting representative samples, isolating and analyzing each fluid phase, and providing data from the analysis to input to the Vx acquisition software data to obtain more accurate flow rates. The collection of phase representative samples also opens the opportunity for a full recombination PVT study to be performed using the improved recombination ratio at line conditions from the multiphase flow meter. This dedicated multiphase fluid sampling and analysis system, combined with Vx technology provides flow rate better and fluid property than to a conventional test separator system.

Multiphase flow metering is very important in the oilfield. We construct four new liquid metering models (Falling Model I, Falling Model II, Open Channel Model and Element Resistance Model) and a gas metering model based on the online multiphase flow metering equipment without separation. The experimental study was carried on indoors at the multiphase flow metering equipment, and the model coefficients can be figured out by the method of date classification. We can figure out the error of each phase, and evaluate all the metering models. Through errors analysis, the average error of the liquid metering models can be within 10%. The error of gas metering model can be controlled within 20%. The experiment results proved that these metering models can be used in the multiphase metering with different viscosity. The metering precision is rather high in the wide range of gas phase and liquid phase flow rate. And it fits in with outdoor application.

The need for multiphase flow measurement in the oil and gas production and petrochemical industries has been significantly increased over the last few years.Reliable measurements of the multiphase flow parameters such as void fraction, phase concentration, phase velocity and flow pattern identification are important for accurate modelling and/or in the operation of multiphase systems.Although many multiphase flow meters were recently developed, challenges in measuring multiphase flow components remain unresolved.Therefore, extensive research efforts were spent in designing accurate multiphase flow meters and several meters are currently under development worldwide.However, due to the complexity of the multiphase flow mixture and in some cases when three or more phases co-exist, it is impossible to adopt only one technique to develop a multiphase flow meter.Consequently, the integration of multiple sensors, based on several measurement techniques, found to be the optimum solution for accurate multiphase flow metering.The main objective of this study is to evaluate existing multiphase flow measurement techniques for the potential integration in a multiphase flow metering device.

Proper testing and measuring of a gas-condensate well is essential to ascertain the state of the hydrocarbon system at reservoir conditions and to plan the best production and recovery program for the reservoir. At surface, the volumetric measurement of three phase flow of a wet gas well has been considered challenging. Existing conventional metering devices and ordinary multiphase flow meters (MPFMs) are usually incapable of providing accurate measurement of flow rates in a dominating high gas volume fraction. Portable separators equipped with liquid gauge tanks are still considered accurate, but are bulky and expensive. This paper discusses the results obtained from tests conducted using multiphase flow meters in wet gas-condensate producers at a wide range of flowing conditions. The meters were installed in conjunction with a regular three-phase test separator, and the objective of the tests was to measure meter accuracy in comparison with the data obtained from the conventional test separator. Obtaining accurate three-phase data in wet gas producers poses a significant challenge for the majority of conventional multiphase flow meters, because of the high-gas volume fraction (95 % and above) nature of the wells. The paper also discusses some lessons learned, challenges and uncertainties associated with accurate flow measurement of a wet gas well encountered throughout the testing, as well as other important observations. The tests were conducted by Saudi Aramco over a four-month period using two MPFMs (A and B) in five different wells, spread out throughout the Ghawar field.The tests were conducted in wells producing at rates ranging from 10 to 40 MMSCFD, and condensate-gas ratios ranging from 30 to 320 Bbls/MMSCFD. Three tests were conducted in each gas producer, totaling 15 tests. The testing concluded that both meters require technological upgrading to meet the acceptance criteria in measuring the three phase flow with acceptable accuracy.

Modern challenges in reservoir management have recently faced new opportunities in production control and optimization strategies. These strategies in turn rely on the availability of monitoring equipment, which is used to obtain production rates in real-time with sufficient accuracy. In particular, a multiphase flow meter is a device for measuring the individual rates of oil, gas and water from a well in real-time without separating fluid phases. Currently, there are several technologies available on the market but multiphase flow meters generally incapable to handle all ranges of operating conditions with satisfactory accuracy in addition to being expensive to maintain. Virtual Flow Metering (VFM) is a mathematical technique for the indirect estimation of oil, gas and water flowrates produced from a well. This method uses more readily available data from conventional sensors, such as downhole pressure and temperature gauges, and calculates the multiphase rates by combining physical multiphase models, various measurement data and an optimization algorithm. In this work, a brief overview of the virtual metering methods is presented, which is followed by the application of several advanced machine-learning techniques for a specific case of multiphase production monitoring in a highly dynamic wellbore. The predictive capabilities of different types of machine learning instruments are explored using a model simulated production data. Also, the effect of measurement noise on the quality of estimates is considered. The presented results demonstrate that the data-driven methods are very capable to predict multiphase flow rates with sufficient accuracy and can be considered as a back-up solution for a conventional multiphase meter.

Multiphase flowmeters (MPFM) are used to measure oil, water, and gas volumetric flow rates in real time without phase separation. Field-proven MPFM play an important role in oilfield operations as the trusted flow measurements enable production optimization and flow assurance. However, accurate multiphase flow metering requires knowledge of the reservoir fluid properties. Therefore, operators require reliable methods to keep the MPFM configuration updated and representative of the production fluids. This is particularly important for subsea fields where physical access to the MPFM can be difficult. This paper describes a successful remote water-phase characterization leading to reconfiguration of a dual-energy spectral gamma ray MPFM for an oil well in a deepwater field offshore Ghana. Reconfiguration of the MPFM was performed using data from when the well was shut in and the flowmeter venturi throat was filled with water at static flow conditions. The data was taken from Subsea Live data-driven performance service from OneSubsea (the vendor), which offers real-time data for health, operational and production insights for subsea assets. The mass attenuation coefficients for water were updated in the MPFM configuration to more representative values, determined using historical data. After the remote reconfiguration, the reconfigured MPFM demonstrated good accuracy when benchmarked against topside separator measurements, showing a proper agreement between the estimated in-situ values using historical flow metering data and the experimental measurements for both high energy and low energy water mass attenuation coefficients.

Multiphase flow metering is a challenging task because of the complexity of multiphase flow. In this paper, nonintrusive multiphase flow metering techniques, including machine learning (ML) / artificial intelligence models for the identification of flow regimes and estimation of flow parameters of a two-phase flow in a horizontal pipe are proposed that use data from Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) and conventional measurements such as differential pressure in the pipe. The flow regimes are classified into five types, namely plug, slug, annular, wavy and stratified. Two-phase air/water flow experimental data from ECT are collected by running extensive experiments using the horizontal section of the multiphase flow rig at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN). Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is performed on these data to extract features for use in classification and regression algorithms. Time series of normalized capacitance data from ECT sensors are used to classify flow regimes and identify flow parameters. ML techniques of Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) and Decision Tree (DT) are used to classify flow regimes by using features extracted from ECT data. The cross-correlation technique is used to estimate flow velocity using data from a twinplane ECT module. ML regression techniques are used to estimate phase fractions. Fusing data from differential pressure sensors enhances the flow regime classification. An overall system performance is given with suggestions for designing dedicated control algorithms for actuators used in multiphase flow control.

During the past few years, Saudi Aramco has installed and field tested eight different types of multiphase flow meters (MPFM). These newly developed, compact MPFM are targeted for wellhead installation at remote onshore fields and unmanned offshore platforms, where weight and space are major concerns. MPFMs could provide continuous well test data, which would lead to more accurate production allocation and better reservoir management. The application of MPFMs in Saudi Aramco’s production operations, if proven successful, will provide continuous online well production monitoring, and eliminate large conventional test separators, test lines, and offshore test barges. As a result, tremendous economic savings could be realized due to the significant reduction in capital and operating expenditures associated with well testing activities. The test installations cover a wide range of multiphase applications from over six different oil fields. The objective of the field testing program was to establish the ability of each meter to accurately measure the three production phases (oil, water and gas), and to determine meter reliability in a field environment. Field test results of the multiphase meters are compared to reference conventional test separators. The paper also presents the current status of multiphase metering technology, and discusses in detail the multiphase metering evaluation program at Saudi Aramco.

This paper introduces the reasoning, methods, and technology behind using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to obtain a sample of production fluids from offshore sub-sea installations. Subsea sampling in this context involves physically delivering equipment to sub-sea installations, connecting to said installations, obtaining a measure of the product in question, and returning said measure of fluid to the surface in a specified condition. Methods and technologies relating to the transport and laboratory analysis of the product once delivered to the surface are examined briefly, but not in great detail. An explanation of why the offshore oil and gas industry is increasingly interested in subsea sampling, and the value it brings to operating companies is presented. What is Subsea Sampling? Subsea Sampling is the act of retrieving a measure of production fluid from a subsea installation such as a production tree, manifold, or other junction for the purpose of testing and recording information about said fluid. The quantity and type of fluid that is retrieved depends on the information that is required from the sample. The information retrieved from samples includes but is not limited to chemical composition, pressure volume temperature (PvT) analysis, salinity, and density. The values obtained for the different attributes are used to calibrate subsea multiphase flow meters and manage reservoir production and intervention schedules. Obtaining samples from installations in deep water, 5000 feet or more necessitates the use of remote operated vehicles (ROVs) to carry and manipulate the sample gathering and transport equipment, or the use of down wire tooling packages. The focus of this paper is the former. Why is Subsea Sampling Performed? Offshore oil and gas producers perform, or plan to perform subsea sampling for two reasons. The first reason is to support the use of subsea multiphase flow meters. The second reason is gathering data to support reservoir management efforts.

This paper presents a performance evaluation of multiphase flow models when using these models on Virtual Flow Meters (VFM). Recently, VFM simulators have been identified as a technology capable of provide metering backup, monitoring for abnormalities of physical multiphase flow meters and also for production well allocation. Nevertheless, there are just a few studies found in the literature analysing the accuracy of different VFM models applied to multiphase flow metering. In the oil and gas industry it is essential to accurately measure the amount of oil, gas and water being produced by individual wells. Prior to the 1980s, single-phase measurements alone were sufficient to meet the industry standards. However, with the advent of deepwater exploration and production, multiple wells comingling to a single production separator is a common practice in petroleum production for offshore systems. Therefore, the use of multiphase flow meters to account for the production of oil, gas and water from individual wells became evident. This investigation uses field data for more than one well to evaluate the performance VFM simulators. The results obtained from this study shows that VFM models can provide accurate predictions for multiphase flow metering. The simulators evaluated in this study could predict flow rates of oil, gas and water within acceptable levels of uncertainty, with an average absolute error of 20%.