High Accuracy Flow Rate Measurements: An Entire Multiphase Solution at the Well Site

Representative reservoir fluid sampling and characterization has become increasingly important over the years. With exploration, appraisal and development activities moving into marginal fields and more challenging environments, accurate fluid characterization becomes more critical. This can be said for the formation tester, DST and multiphase sampling and fluid characterization environments with the most challenging area in recent years arguably being the multiphase environment. Multiphase flow meters have been accepted for several years now by the industry. Their use in permanent or well testing applications has been growing rapidly. In many cases, multiphase flow meters have replaced the separator for flow rate evaluation, but some fundamental needs from the client were not addressed properly, such as the ability to collect representative samples for phase-behavior characterization. Moreover, metering accuracies has been questionable in many cases (at very high GVF or in wet gas conditions, high pressure or /and high temperature).This paper focus on the Multiphase Active Sampling Device Service (MASS), a fluid sampling and analysis service that can be provided with the Vx multiphase metering technology with the objective of collecting representative samples, isolating and analyzing each fluid phase, and providing data from the analysis to input to the Vx acquisition software data to obtain more accurate flow rates. The collection of phase representative samples also opens the opportunity for a full recombination PVT study to be performed using the improved recombination ratio at line conditions from the multiphase flow meter. This dedicated multiphase fluid sampling and analysis system, combined with Vx technology provides flow rate better and fluid property than to a conventional test separator system.