New Choke Correlations for Sabryiah Field, Kuwait

摘要

Multiphase flow occurs in almost all producing oil wells and nearly every flowing well has some sort of choke to regulate the flowing rate, for the following reasons: (1) to maintain sufficient back pressure to prevent sand entry, (2) to protect surface equipment from high pressure, (3) to prevent gas or water coning and (4) to produce the reservoir at the optimum flow rate. Present choke correlations are best used for the area where same conditions met with the data used to generate the correlations. Inaccurate flow rate predictions could lead to gas/water coning, sand entry, and excessive pressures at the separator which can be a major factor of killing the producer well. In this paper, actual data production tests from vertical wells from Sabriyah Fields in Kuwait, were utilized to establish a new generalized multiphase flow choke correlation that predicts liquid flow rates as a function of flowing wellhead pressure, gas-liquid ratio, and surface wellhead choke size. The primary proposed correlation exhibits more accuracy (only 4% average error) than the existent correlations. The multiphase correlation coefficient was determined as 89%. These results will undoubtedly encourage the production engineer to utilize the proposed correlation for future practical answers when a lack of available information, time, and calculation capabilities arises.