The Petroleum Production System - Wellbore

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The wellbore is a hole drilled to a subsurface formation; in the case of oil and gas production, an assumed reservoir.

Contributions

The wellbore’s contribution in the petroleum production system are:

• It provides a means of fluid flow from the reservoir to the surface
• The wellbore radius determines the maximum size of casing, and other subsurface equipments
• The wellbore radius affects the flow/production rate
• The wellbore radius through the sandface area affects the flowing wellbore pressure 1

Problem Areas and Solutions

• Wellbore instability i.e. wellbore closure, enlargement, fracturing, and collapse. Common approaches to mitigate this are 2
  • Use of established field standards and practices
  • Conducting wellbore-stability analysis

Up next, we will examine the casing.

Standing on Giant’s shoulders (References):

• 1. IHS Energy Wellbore radius
• 2. PetroWiki Borehole instability