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It is based on correlation between surface flowrate 

Application

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• Setting up the required production or injection regime for each well upon the current formation pressure, reservoir saturation and production target specified by FDP 
  
  
• Generating Lift Curves (LC) tables as input for Reservoir Flow Modelling (RFM)
  
  

Technology

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Most reservoir engineers exploit material balance thinking which is based on long-term well-by-well surface flowrate targets  (whether producers or injectors).

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This is primary domain of Well Flow Performance (WFP) analysis.Well Flow Performance (

WFP) is performed on stabilised wellbore and reservoir flow and does not cover transient behaviour which is one of the primary subjects of Well Testing domain.

The conventional WFP – Well Performance Analysis is perfomed as the 

• Inflow Performance Relation (IPR) – responsible for reservoir deliverability (see below)
  
  

• Lift Curves (LC) – responsible for well deliverability  (see below )

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The intersection of IPR and Lift Curves represent the Stabilised wellbore flow (see Fig. 1)

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Given a tubing head pressure 

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Workflow

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1. Check the current production rate against the production target from FDP
   
   
2. If the diffference is big enough to justify the cost of production optimization (see point 8 below) then proceed to the step 3 below
   
   
3. Assess formation pressure based on well tests
   
   
4. Simulate IPR / LC based on the current WOR/GOR
   
   
5. Calculate the stabilized flow bottom-hole pressure
   
   
6. Gather the current bottom-hole pressure

   LaTeX Math Inline
   body p_{wf}

   
   
   
7. Check up the calculation aganst the actual 

   LaTeX Math Inline
   body p_{wf}

   
   
   
8. Recommend the production optimisation activities to adjust bottom-hole pressure 

   LaTeX Math Inline
   body p_{wf}

   :
   
   
   • adjusting the choke at surface
     
     
   • adjusting the pump settings from surface 
     
     
   • changing the pump depth
     
     
   • changing the tubing size
     
     
   • changing the pump
     
     

The above workflow is very simplistic and assumes single-layer formation with no cross-flow complications.

In practise, the Well Flow Performance (WFP) analysis is often very tentative and production technologists spend some time experimenting with well regimes on well-by-well basis. 

See Also

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Petroleum Industry / Upstream / Production / Subsurface Production / Well & Reservoir Management

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[ Inflow Performance Relation (IPR) ] [ Lift Curves (LC) ]

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References

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Joe Dunn Clegg, Petroleum Engineering Handbook, Vol. IV – Production Operations Engineering, SPE, 2007

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