American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2015 - 90

SpecialReport: Gas Compression Technology
Sim™ system to analyze PIONA. This
technique is relatively new and suitable for
a wide variety of field and refinery oil handling and processing.
The subject crude oil was characterized

using only the PIONA components and
simulated a typical shale oil facility using
these process simulation data as well as
straight CN (alkane) data. As shown in
Table 1, there was little difference in the

calculated gas production between the two
techniques, but there was a notable difference in oil properties. This would not normally impact gas handling equipment
directly, but relying on inaccurate predicted oil properties may result in requiring an
unnecessary stabilizer to reduce the oil
gravity to a safe or required level for transporting by rail or pipeline. Off-gas flow
from such a stabilizer would impact facility and gas handling designs.
PVT data should be used with caution
to reduce the risk of errors or inaccurate
modeling. The predicted reservoir fluid data
are "second hand" from theoretical combined gas and oil streams calculated from
chromatograph analyses of individual
streams. A more accurate reservoir fluid for
process simulations may be developed using the actual chromatograph analyses of
the original samples and the oil and gas
flow rates to recreate the reservoir fluid.

TABLE 2
Calculated GOR Values
Alkane Simulation
HPS
OIL DATA

PIONA Simulation

Recovered
Tank Flash

LPS

HPS

Recovered
Tank Flash

LPS

Oil Production

Oil Production

Oil Make, bbl/d,
@ T,P

617.7

477.0

467.8

601.5

461.6

452.6

Oil Make, bbl/d,
@ STD

609.1

463.1

454.8

596.3

451.3

443.0

GAS DATA

Gas Production

Gas Production

Flow, Mcf/d

512

36.1

11.6

517

34.3

11.6

GOR @ T,P

829

1,149

1,196

860

1,194

1,244

GOR @ STD

841

1,184

1,231

867

1,222

1,271

TABLE 3
Process Simulation for Different Oils
Oil Production, bbl/d

Gas Production, Mcf/d

Actual

Standard

API Grav
D-323

RVP

From HPS

From LPS

From VRT

Total Gas
Production

C2+ GPM
Total Gas

ECD Gas
Burned

Oil A

470.1

458.9

63.29

8.08

7,099.8

27.4

16.3

7,143.5

6.50

3.9

Oil B

467.9

458.9

41.53

7.05

548.7

22.9

14.3

585.8

9.08

2.4

Oil C

467.2

458.9

41.26

7.45

843.0

20.5

14.9

878.4

9.98

2.5

TABLE 4
Summary of Well Gas Streams (Btu Quantities and Values)
Gas Production

NGL Recovered

HPS Gas,
MMBtu/d
Case 1 - Light Oil
Case 2 - Medium Oil
Case 3 - Heavy Oil

LPS Flash
MMBtu/d

VRT Gas
MMBtu/d

HPS Gas, NGL
gal/d

5,721.4
717.3
36.5

12.7
15.3
1.2

2.9
3.4
0.8

17,207.0
1,125.0
2,501.6

Percent of Btu Production
Case 1 - Light Oil
Case 2 - Medium Oil
Case 3 - Heavy Oil

99.7%
97.5%
94.7%

0.2%
2.1%
3.2%

37,232
3,635
2,629

48
218
189

0.1%
0.5%
2.1%

81.13
7.92
5.73

90 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

0.10
0.48
0.41

4.0
164.6
184.8

3.0
184.9
226.9

100.0%
76.3%
85.9%

0.0%
11.2%
6.3%

0.0%
12.5%
7.8%

Percent of Total Value
13
197
230

Total Value, $/bbl Oil Produced
Case 1 - Light Oil
Case 2 - Medium Oil
Case 3 - Heavy Oil

VRT Gas NGL
gal/d

Percent of NGL Production

Total Value, $/d
Case 1 - Light Oil
Case 2 - Medium Oil
Case 3 - Heavy Oil

LPS Flash NGL
gal/d

0.03
0.43
0.50

99.8%
89.8%
86.3%

0.1%
5.4%
6.2%

0.0%
4.9%
7.5%
American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2015

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