Multiphase Metering for Unconventional Shale
A ‘game changer’ for the shale industry, providing direct and accurate wellhead monitoring and metering in a compact and highly cost-effective design
Oil and gas operators today strive to improve well performance through technology and innovation. Those innovations include identifying efficiency improvements, improving infrastructure and reducing service cost. These challenges apply to the entire industry, such as subsea, offshore and onshore, including unconventional oil and gas (such as shale plays). Over the past years, Emerson has gained vast experience in using the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter (MPFM) for accurate measurement in flowback operations, and initial, mid-and late life production in the North American shale industry.
In unconventional developments, the term flowback is defined as the period where the well is producing back most of the water that was pumped into the rock formation during hydraulic fracturing.
Accurate, continuous measurement data and process diagnostics from the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter during flowback provides:
Unconventional production challenges can include poorly sized facilities, shortage on personnel, environmental impact issues, reduced profit due to poor measurements, re-work cost of poor separation, and penalties for venting. By switching to one Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter per well, it can provide a one-size meter for initial production and legacy wells, build confidence in production changes, reduce operations and maintenance costs and safety risks. Continuous insight to production from the Roxar 2600 MPFM, coupled with artificial lift optimization programs can yield 4-20% more production. The Roxar 2600 MPFM includes smart diagnostics and the ability to remotely monitor and calibrate the meter, producing real-time continuous monitoring of all three phases.
Ultimately, the goal is to optimize production through the reduction in environmental exposure, to maximize revenue streams and to reduce operating costs.
Lower oil prices are driving operators to find ways to reduce capital and operating expenditure. These include ways to improve well performance through technology and innovation, identifying efficiency improvements, improving infrastructure and service cost reductions. By switching to one Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter per well, operators can achieve accurate well allocation, as well as reduced well pad footprint, pipe line requirements and environment exposure as tanks are pushed downstream to central facilities. It can also eliminate bulk separators when there is a common royalty interest and a central processing facility is utilized.
In addition to the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter, a Roxar SAM Acoustic Sand Monitor can be installed. These non-intrusive sand monitors can be utilized for quantifying sand and verifying sand trap efficiency and possible pipework erosion. Combining the Roxar 2600 MPFM and the Roxar SAM Acoustic Sand Monitor essentially provides a 4-phase measurement system (gas, oil, water and sand), in which the sand monitor utilizes the velocity from the Roxar 2600 MPFM to quantify the amount of sand produced.
At Emerson we pride ourselves in continually listening to our customers and striving to meet their instrumentation needs. We are delighted to highlight the new embedded software for the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter, Rapid Adaptive Measurement. Trusting your data, however challenging and varied flow conditions may be, and streamlining the integration and configuration process, are key needs from your instrumentation to ensure peak performance. Adding to the digitalization of your operations, supporting your goal to do more, better, with less, is also addressed with this innovational embedded software. Please see the video section of this page for further information on this exciting software release.
Layer detection and compensation features are built into the embedded software of the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter to protect the integrity, reliability and robustness of the measurement results provided by the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter.
The Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter has proven to be robust and is performing well with all the various assisted recovery methods. With naturally flowing wells with erratic behaviors due to continuous changes in water, oil and gas, the Roxar 2600 Multiphase Flow Meter can adapt to the different flow regimes using advanced sensor capabilities to determine not only the rapid changes of the total flow but also address complex combinations of phase distribution.
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