An investigation of liquid loading prediction in gas well

Abstract

Liquid loading is one of common problems in gas production. This study focuses on the influences of liquid holdup to critical flowrate. Three critical flowrate correlations are selected in order to investigate liquid loading prediction of actual production data. Since there are several fluctuations in actual data, the analysis of fluid properties is made in order to investigate over the input data and evaluate the influences of fluid properties to critical flowrate. Gas specific gravity is proved as the most important property of liquid loading consideration because it has the widest range of possible value. Moreover, gas specific gravity has the most dominant influence on predicted critical flowrate. Influences of liquid holdup are found to be an important factor behind predicted values of each correlation because it has the effect on the selected correlations in different manners. Moreover, the gas production rate is clarified as a vital parameter of well status prediction. At the end of this study, the comparison of gas production rate and predicted critical flowrate of each correlation is set in order to investigate the well status. Results of this analysis show the critical condition to predict the liquid loading in actual production wells. The results and conclusions can be utilized as guidelines for petroleum engineers about how to deal with this problem and make right decisions on actual production wells.