Efficacious Use of Simple and Cost Effective Acoustic Flow Analyzer Measurement to Enhance Recovery and Improve Life Cycle of Wells

Abstract

Well integrity technologies have been in high demand within the oil and gas industry in the recent years due to two main reasons; Recent incidents and down term in industry. The recent failures and blow out incidents occurring in different parts of the world encouraged new strategies and well integrity management systems to be deployed in order to ensure wells are meeting health, safety and environmental standards. Moreover, the down term in industry caused by relatively low oil price which led oil and gas operators to scale down on exploration and drilling and alternatively work-over existing wells. It is believed that the most economical way to work-over the well is by performing data acquisition first, which enables the work-over team to do an informed decision and tackle the specified problem, saving non-productive time. One of the fast growing well integrity technologies is leak detection. Unlike conventional data acquisition techniques such as corrosion monitoring, leak detection method traces the fluids entering to the well-bore and gives a dynamic image of what's going on in a producing/injecting well. The leak detection is mainly based on passive acoustic measurement, which is typically based on listening to fluid vibration by moving through different aperture sizes, and recorded in different frequencies and amplitudes. Other measurements are recommended to add such as temperature, pressure and multiphase sensors (in case leak is suspected to be inside the tubing). The technology has been used in various locations around the world with challenging environments. The typical and most desired ones are firstly the surface casing leaks where fluids of various types enter into the annuli between casings and build up on surface. Moreover, high amounts of undesired fluids contributing to the production and the source would be hard to identify with conventional technologies.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90267 ©2016 AAPG/SPE Africa Energy and Technology Conference, Nairobi City, Kenya, December 5-7, 2016