Case Studies of Petroleum Production Systems With the Flow Performance Index (FPI)

In this work, the Flow Performance Index (FPI) is introduced to guide the analysis of the performance of well systems for petroleum production. For some time now, the oil industry has been investing in the technological advancement of the instrumentation of its wells and flow lines; therefore, the volume of acquired data is quite substantial. Nevertheless, these data are still scantly used and stored in isolated databases where sharing the data is difficult, forcing the professionals to waste time, searching and organizing information, rather than spending time on decision-making processes. Consequently, there is a need to organize and integrate the available data from the different sources and areas of petroleum engineering. The FPI may be employed to handle large amounts of field data (measured periodically) in a rational approach to integrate the data. The FPI allows the assessment of the technologies used in wells for completion and artificial lift, and the performance of wells and flow lines; it may be used for monitoring production and to aid in the diagnosis of flow assurance problems; it could also be employed for benchmark studies and comparison of field production systems. A few examples of applications of the FPI are presented here, comparing the performance of vertical, directional and horizontal wells, sand control technologies, and monitoring of production. Further, the concept of the FPI is extended for gas-lift wells, and a more general formulation is proposed to include mechanical-lift systems. The examples given herein have proven the usefulness of the FPI, in different areas of an upstream business unity in Brazil.