Determination of water ratio in oil and gas fields

During 2021 PDE developed a new method for the determination of water content in oil and gas fields for a customer extracting natural gas from fields in Germany. The method was rapidly implemented into the customer's existing MES.

The method utilizes the separated water tank levels. Re-injection into the field or removel via tank vehicle are automatically detected. Operating conditions and flow rate of pumps complete the picture and allow surprisingly detailed deduction of the water ratio in the fields.

While the approach is quite simple in principle, the devil is in the details: Several pumps filling the same tank, injection from various tanks into the same field via one or more injection probes, a tank being filled by pump while simultaneously being evacuated into a vehicle and so on all have to be handled.

Nevertheless the method proved very reliable and performant. Especially low-threshold access for the users and the robustness of the implementation resulted in quick adoption by the personnel. In fact, our customer uses the system to check and correct the receipts from their tank vehicle provider as the new method is much less prone to human error.

The method and implementation are published in  009/21, S. 40 – 42 of journal "EEK - Technologie & Transformation von fossilen und grünen Energieträgern". The article, unfortunately, is only available in German, but if you are interested in details, please feel free to contact us.