Gas-production-data analysis of variable-pressure-drawdown/variable-rate systems: A density-based approach

This study demonstrates that production-data analysis of variablebottomhole-flowing-pressure/variable-rate gas wells under boundary-dominated flow (BDF) is possible by use of a density-based approach. In this approach, governing equations are expressed in terms of density variables and dimensionless viscosity/compressibility ratios. Previously, the methodology was successfully used to derive rescaled exponential models for gas-rate-decline analysis of wells primarily producing at constant bottomhole pressure (Ayala and Ye 2013a, b; Ayala and Zhang 2013; Ye and Ayala 2013; Zhang and Ayala 2014). For the case of natural-gas systems experiencing BDF, gas-well-performance analysis has been made largely possible by invoking the concepts of pseudotime, normalized pseudotime, or material-balance pseudotime. The density-based methodology rigorously derived in this study, however, does not use any type of pseudotime calculations, even for variable-rate/variablepressure-drawdown cases. The methodology enables straightforward original-gas-in-place calculations and gas-well-performance forecasting by means of type curves or straight-line analysis. A number of field and numerical case studies are presented to showcase the capabilities of the proposed approach.