4 Reasons For Poor Well-performance And Their Potential Solutions

The global oil and gas industry is incredibly competitive at the moment, more so than it has ever been before. Given the political power shifts, economic instability, and supply chain issues, there are some major opportunities and challenges that companies need to face head-on, and the last thing you’d want to worry about is poor well-performance at any of your sites.

Great well-performance is critical to ensure the success of your oil drilling operations since a well that isn’t performing to its full capacity leads to lower profitability, a reduced output, and overall, well failure.

Generally, several factors may explain inadequate well-performance, including natural causes, environmental factors, and technical issues. For instance, the low production could be due to natural reservoir depletion, i.e., when the well simply starts running out of oil. This is a natural reason, but it’s also brought on by poor reservoir management and overproduction.

Alternatively, sometimes, wells don’t perform well due to mechanical failures like pipe corrosion, insufficient pressure, and downhole equipment failure.

It’s important to understand why your well isn’t performing as it should before you try to address the problem with viable solutions.

Here are some of the most common causes of poor well-performance and how they can be reversed or fixed.

Water Gas Coning

This is a very common problem that affects well-performance. It happens when there’s water under the oil column, or if there’s a gas cap right above it, if the wellbore is only penetrating part of the formation, or if all the perforations are limited to the oil zone alone. These factors combined cause vertical and horizontal pressure during oil production, and therefore, deformation is caused by the oil-gas or oil-water contact.

Since this is a common problem, there are well-versed solutions to this. All that really needs to be done is maintaining the flow rates to help maintain the pressure gradients. This will help ensure the unwanted fluids aren’t coned and, therefore, they do not affect the flow of the production.

Corrosion

Corrosion in wellbores can be categorized into three subcategories, i.e., oxidation, chemical corrosion, and electrical corrosion. Typically, if a wellbore is going to corrode, you should be able to see the signs early on, and the sooner you identify the corrosion potential, the easier and cheaper it is to fix it.

Corrosion can take many forms, and it almost always comes with scale formation. In general, corrosion of any type can be avoided by using the right materials during the building process and with regular inspection and maintenance. Most experts would check for signs of corrosion during troubleshooting poor well-performance, which helps to stay on top of such problems.

Liquid Loading

To understand liquid loading, it’s important to picture the well and its functions in its entirety. The idea is that there is a precise difference in the pressure at the top of the well and the very bottom. This pressure difference has to be more than the hydrostatic pressure within the fluid column (it should also take into account any friction that occurs). This precisely calculated pressure is what will help the fluid flow to the surface.

So, in cases where the pressure isn’t sufficient, the oil remains still in the wellbore. And this is called liquid loading, which is basically another sign of a poorly functioning well.

There are a few ways to fix this; the first approach most experts would usually suggest is changing the wellbore configuration. Another approach is getting artificial lift equipment in place.

Mechanical Issues

Many times, poor well-performance is directly linked to mechanical failures, and these occur very often and for many different reasons. For instance, the download equipment could be corroded and malfunction as a result, or there could be a buildup of scale or debris in the wellbore, or a manufacturing problem could cause it due to inadequate cement protection.

The point is mechanical issues can occur for a variety of reasons that may or may not be in your control. The only way to address them is to perform a detailed diagnosis to identify where and how the failure has occurred and then address the issue.

Of course, poor well-performance can also be caused by reservoir depletion, formation damage, or other design-related issues. The only way to stay on top of your oil well production is to keep a close eye on production levels.

You can do this with daily drilling report generated by our rig performance reporting system. We offer some excellent drilling information solutions for drilling contractors and oil and gas companies—get in touch with us for more information.