Instructor/s: Rudi Stocker, Fekete Associates Inc.

Who Should Attend: Production engineers and technologists involved in wellbore design and optimization.

Tutorial Description: Evaluation and optimization of flowing oil and gas wells is a common problem in oil and gas production. Petroleum engineers are familiar with problems in multiphase flow and with prediction of physical and transport properties for well-characterized fluids. Detailed knowledge of the physical nature of the fluids produced is often lacking, however, despite having a profound effect on their behaviour in the wellbore. This tutorial will demonstrate how some problems in wellbore optimization can be addressed. Principles of oil and gas production and calculation of pressure drop in multiphase flow will be reviewed, and problems in optimization of production and injection wells will be analyzed using F.A.S.T. VirtuWell™ and F.A.S.T. PVTplus™ from Fekete Associates Inc., powerful tools which are specialized for these types of analyses. Finally, some of the frontiers of research in this area will be described.

Instructor/s: Rudi Stocker holds B.Sc. (with Distinction) and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Calgary. He is a professional engineer and has worked for more than 20 years in the development of simulation software for the process chemical, petrochemical, polymerization, and oil and gas production industries, and has consulted in the areas of oil and gas production and petroleum reservoir engineering.