Completion Engineering Consultants

Wellbore Configuration Designs to Minimize Liquid Loading

The wellbore configuration and surface producing conditions dictate the management of the post-treatment cleanup and long-term production optimization of produced fluids from gas and oil wells. Fluid removal is critical because liquid loading increases the saturation in the fracture dramatically reducing the effective fracture conductivity.  Fluid loading also causes liquids to buildup in the formation around the fracture which increases skin and reduces productivity.  The end result in gas wells is that the effectiveness of the fracture stimulation can disappear and formation skin damage will develop because of a dramatic decrease in gas relative permeability in the areas of this increased fluid saturation.  This results in an abnormal decline in the production rate which can be significant long-term.

IPT has unique internal reservoir engineering software and approaches customized from analyses of thousands of wells that match actual gas well liquid loading producing conditions. This enhances our completion engineering ability to design wellbore configurations that optimize management of produced liquids, thereby maximizing long-term fracture stimulation effectiveness, minimizing skin around the fracture in the formation and maximizing the production response and ultimate reserve recovery.

Along with our internal software customized to fit actual gas and oil well liquid loading scenarios from thousands of wells, we use both finite difference and analytical reservoir simulators and link this with our Nodal analysis approaches to optimize the wellbore configuration design process. Coupling the total completion engineering process along with years of experience is what makes the difference and gives us the capability to provide our clients the best possible advice.