Abstract
Inflow performance relationship (IPR) of wells is an essential piece of information required in production well modeling and optimization. A reliable IPR is usually established based on bottom hole pressure measurements. However, such measurements are often very expensive. It is highly desirable for production engineers to be able to establish well IPR from wellhead-pressure measurements.
This paper demonstrates that a mechanistic model originally developed for modeling gas, water, oil, and solid particle 4-phase flow in borehole drilling can be employed for establishing IPR of oil wells when bottom hole-pressure measurements are not available. Two cases with field measurements are presented. The results indicate that, using the 4-phase flow model, the well IPR curves constructed based on the wellhead-pressure measurements are accurate. The error in bottom pressure prediction is less than 2%. The error in productivity index determination is less than 10%.
