TABLE OF CONTENTS The role of a production engineer is to maximize oil and gas production in a cost-effective manner. Familiarization and understanding of oil and gas production systems are essential to the engineers. This chapter provides graduating production engineers with some basic knowledge about production systems. More engineering principles are discussed in the later chapters.
As shown in Fig. 1.1, a complete oil or gas production system consists of a reservoir, well, flowline, separators, pumps, and transportation pipelines. The reservoir supplies wellbore with crude oil or gas. The well provides a path for the production fluid to flow from bottom hole to surface and offers a means to control the fluid production rate. The flowline leads the produced fluid to separators. The separators remove gas and water from the crude oil. Pumps and compressors are used to transport oil and gas through pipelines to sales points.
Hydrocarbon accumulations in geological traps can be classified as reservoir, field, and pool. A "reservoir" is a porous and permeable underground formation containing an individual bank of hydrocarbons confined by impermeable rock or water barriers and is characterized by a single natural pressure system. A "field" is an area that consists of one or more reservoirs all related to the same structural feature. A "pool" contains one or more reservoirs in isolated structures. Depending on the initial reservoir condition in the phase diagram (Fig. 1.2), hydrocarbon accumulations are classified as oil, gas condensate,...
