Email Document Reference

Enter your email address below and the reference for this document will be sent to shortly from webmaster@ceesi.com.

Title: Fiber-Optic Flowmeter At Bp Mahogany, Offshore Trinidad
Author: . H. nalmis, A. Vera, S. Mathias, E. S. Johansen, R. Chun
Source: 2008 South East Asia Flow Measurement Conference
Year Published: 2008
Abstract: In March, 2002, a downhole fiber-optic flowmeter was successfully installed in BPs Mahogany A-15 well, offshore Trinidad. The fiber-optic monitoring system also includes downhole pressure and temperature sensors and reports the real-time oil, water, and gas flow rates to the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. The optical flowmeter is based on measurement of the flow velocity and the speed of sound which yield the flow rate and gas volume fraction, respectively. The Mahogany A-15 well is a single-zone producer with a long horizontal gravel-packed producing zone. The reservoir has a thin oil rim between a large gas cap and aquifer. Initially, in March of 2002, the well produced mostly oil with a low, but rapidly increasing gas rate. In 2003, the wellhead choke was opened fully and the total production rate increased which resulted in coning a large amount of gas. The flowmeter demonstrated excellent performance over flow conditions ranging from low gas fraction liquids, to severe slugging, and on to wetgas. Currently, the well is producing in excess of 50 mmscfd of gas and about 800 bpd of oil and condensate with a downhole GVF well above 95%. The optical flowmeter system continues to give gas and liquid rates in good agreement with the test separator proving the longevity of optical sensing and the robustness of the measurement methodology. In large gas reservoirs, the trend is towards drilling fewer wells per platform (in some cases 3 or less) with large diameter producing lines and very high flow rates (100s of mmscfd per well). At such large gas rates, it is often cost and size prohibitive to use conventional separators topside for metering the flow rates. Furthermore, losing measurement of these wells impacts a large percentage of the total production. The full bore downhole optical flowmeter has demonstrated measurement robustness, a wide measurement range with no practical upper flow rate limit, and performance that has been proven in both field installations and flow labs including CEESI, NEL, Hydro, and SwRI.

In order to prevent spam and automated file downloads for documents within the Measurement Library, please follow the instructions below and then you will be able to email a reference to this article.