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, reduced profit due to poor measurements and re-work cost of poor separation. By switching to one Roxar 2600 MPFM per well, it can provide metering for initial production and legacy wells, build confidence in production changes, reduce operations costs and safety risks. Continuous insight from the Roxar 2600 MPFM, coupled with artificial lift optimization programs can yield 4-20% more production.
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 and improving infrastructure. 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.
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 in essence provides a 4-phase measurement system (gas, oil, water and sand), in which the 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.
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.
Case Study
Emerson leverages its expertise and technologies to help companies improve earnings by as much as 10 percent