A.

Alderete Berzzab

Use off unccertaain prroduuction

n
daata in
n nod
dal annalyssis
TU Delft: Applied Earth Sciences

1



Use of uncertain production data in nodal
analysis
By
Alejandro Alderete Berzab

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master in Applied Earth Sciences
Track: Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences

At Delft University of Technology,

To be defended publicly in August 2016

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ir. Jan Dirk Jansen Petroleum Engineering

Thesis committee: Prof. Dr. Pacelli Zitha Petroleum Engineering
Eduardo G. Dias de Barros, MSc. Petroleum Engineering
Kevin Bisdom , MSc Applied Geology

An electronic version of this thesis is available at http://repository.tudelft.nl/.

2
 Preface
This thesis was written with the objective of developing a method to include uncertainties in
the nodal analysis of oil and gas wells.
As a member of the MSc program in Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences at Delft
University of Technology it was an honor to work on this research topic under the supervision
and guidance of my advisor Prof. Jan Dirk Jansen who proposed this topic.
I would like to thank TU Delft and Prof. Jansen for this opportunity and also my colleagues of
this MSc program for the unconditional and impartial support during these last two years.
And finally I would like to thank my family which always trusted in me and kept me motivated
to fulfill one of the many achievements, if not the greatest, of my professional life so far.
I hope you enjoy reading this work.

Alejandro Alderete Berzab

August, 2016

3
 Table of Contents
Preface ........................................................................................................................................ 3
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 5
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 6
2 Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 7
3 Theory ..................................................................................................................................... 9
3.1 Nodal Analysis ................................................................................................................. 9
3.2 Building Stochastic Production Engineering Models ..................................................... 11
3.3 Data Assimilation with Ensemble Kalman Filtering ...................................................... 13
3.4 Twin Experiments with Synthetic Data .......................................................................... 16
4 Application ............................................................................................................................ 17
4.1 Model .............................................................................................................................. 17
4.1.1 Base Model .............................................................................................................. 17
4.1.2 Sensitivity Analysis ................................................................................................. 18
4.1.3 Stochastic Model ...................................................................................................... 19
4.2 Synthetic Data................................................................................................................. 21
4.3 Data Assimilation Results .............................................................................................. 22
5 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 28
6 Recommendations ................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
Appendix A Matlab files ....................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
References ................................................................................................................................ 29

4
 Abstract
The objective of this thesis is to implement a data assimilation algorithm for production data
as a first step in dealing with uncertainties in nodal analysis. The methodology is based on
the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), a data assimilation technique that aims to optimally
combine uncertain prior model predictions and uncertain measured data to obtain a
posterior model with improved predictive power. The implementation of stochastic nodal
analysis models, to generate the uncertain predictions, and the data assimilation procedure
were performed with Matlab. A simple production system with uncertain parameters was
considered, consisting of a well head choke, a tubing and a near-well reservoir region. The
uncertain parameters (random variables) were (log)permeability, skin, choke discharge
coefficient and tubing roughness. The predicted and measured variables were the flowing
bottom hole pressure and flowing tubing head pressure. The measured data in the EnKF
should come from field measurements. To test the method, we performed twin experiments
in which we used synthetic data with added noise. In the examples considered we achieved a
modest reduction in the uncertainty of the model parameters. However, further research is
required to assess the applicability of EnKF, or alternative data assimilation methods, for
stochastic nodal analysis.

5
1 Introduction
Nodal analysis is a frequently used tool in the E&P industry to assess well performance and
the future production potential of oil and gas wells. Nodal analysis is based on system models
for pressure and temperature, comprised of various submodels representing the various
production system elements (Jansen, 2016). In practice, one of the main problems in using
this tool is the limited accuracy of the predictions of well performance because of
uncertainties in the model parameters. Measured production data can be used to improve the
predictive capacity of the models by tuning the uncertain model parameters such that the
mismatch between predicted and measured data is reduced.

The main objective of this thesis is to develop a data assimilation method to systematically
adapt some selected uncertain parameters of the production system, as an alternative to
manual tuning. Data assimilation algorithms are mainly used in weather prediction and in
atmospheric and oceanographic sciences. Moreover, data assimilation is frequently used in the
petroleum industry to perform computer-assisted history matching. A popular data
assimilation method is the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) which is aimed at optimally
combining uncertain prior model predictions with uncertain measurements to obtain an
improved posterior model (Aanonsen et al., 2009).

6
2 Literature Review
Uncertainty quantification is increasingly a topic of study to acquire more knowledge about
reservoir performance and production systems, because of the complexity of integrating
observed and simulated data to a reliable nodal analysis description. This is extremely
important for a companys decisions in the development of an oilfield.
In general, two different approaches for history matching and uncertainty assessment can be
found: optimization-based and ensemble methods. The most commonly used optimization-
based methods use gradient algorithms which have efficient convergence rates. The other
alternative is of the use of ensemble models of which the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) is
the most popular (Aanonsen et al., 2009).
Most of the studies in petroleum engineering using these two methods have been carried out
for computer-assisted history matching in the reservoir engineering domain.

A data assimilation process consists of three components: a set of observations, a dynamic

model and a data assimilation scheme (Robinson and Lermusiaux, 2000). The specific uses
of data assimilation are dependent on the quality of the data sets and models. These uses
include the control of errors for state estimates and the estimation of parameters.
The most common data assimilation methods (computer-assisted history matching) are:
Optimization-based methods minimization of mismatch: Reynolds (Tulsa),
Sarma (Stanford)
Monte Carlo methods: MCMC: Por, Maucec (Shell), NA: Christie (Herriott Watt)
Ensemble Kalman Filtering meteorology, oceanography: Evensen (Norsk
Hydro), Naevdal (IRIS), Oliver (University of Oklahoma), McLaughin (MIT)
Reservoir specific methods: streamline-based - Thiele (StreamSim), Datta-Gupta
(Texas A&M). Probability perturbation Caers (Stanford)
Non-Classical methods: (simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, )

Figure 1 shows the main components of a data assimilation process and how the measured
output and predicted output input are acquired. It can be observed that the observations that
come from the sensors and the predicted data generated by a system model converge into a
data assimilation scheme to update the state variables and parameters of the system models.

7
Figure 1: Data assimilation flow chart.

8
3 Theory
3.1 Nodal Analysis
The analysis of the pressure and temperature drop in production systems is called nodal
analysis within the oil industry (Jansen, 2016). In nodal analysis the production system is
modelled as a sequence of elements connected by nodes. In a one-dimensional (cascade)
system it is possible to move between the system boundaries analyzing every node within
from the upstream or downstream elements (Jansen, 2016).
For example, it is possible to obtain the pressures and flow rates at all the intermediate nodes
by knowing the pressure and flow rate at one end. In a traditional nodal analysis, the most
used analysis nodes are:
Flowing bottom hole pressure, pwf.
Flowing tubing head pressure, ptf.
If a first guess of the oil flow rate qo,sc is made, and the separator pressure psep is used as a
starting point, then the flowing bottom hole pressure pwf can be calculated by computing the
increase in pressure over the manifold, flow line, choke, and top of the tubing until the
analysis node is reached. By repeating this procedure with different flow rates, an outflow
performance curve is generated for the elements downstream of the bottom of the well..
Similarly, starting from the reservoir pressure pR and computing pressure drops over the well
vicinity and the perforations, an inflow performance curve can be generatedfor the system
elements upstream of the bottom of the well.
Figure 2 illustrates nodal analysis downstream and upstream performance curves. The
intersection between both curves is known as the operating point, which means that the well
will be expected to produce at a rate and pressure indicated by the intersection.
As can be seen in Figure 3, the analysis nodes selected for this study are pwf and ptf by fixing
the reservoir pressure pR and the flow line pressure pfl.

9
Figure 2: Nodaal analysis perfo
ormance curvess.

Figure 3: Noodal analysis co

onfiguration.

10
3.2 Building Stochastic Production Engineering Models
After defining which points of the network in the production system will be analyzed, the next
step is to define which parameters play a role as random variables for each element. The
majority of the reservoir properties have a level of uncertainty to different degrees since they
are collected from different sources such as simulations and lab experiments.
It was proposed to use as random variables near the wellbore area:
Permeability, k (m2)
Skin, S (-)
For the well and the well head choke:
Tubing roughness, e (m)
Discharge coefficient, Cd (-)
In practice the discharge coefficient is an empirical value that ranges between 0.7 and 1.2 and
is used for the choke performance curve.
Stochastic models were built using Matlab routines for multi-phase flow through production
system elements, which initially were deterministic. This involved the definition of
probability distribution functions for the stochastic variables and generating ensembles of
model realizations by randomly sampling the distribution functions.
A mean and a standard deviation were defined for each random variable and the distributions
were Gaussian for the set of values obtained except for permeability. For this case, a log
normal distribution was used because permeability in geological models is derived using
semi-log porosity and typically it has a log-normal distribution. As variable for the data
assimilation we therefore used:

k log10 k (3.1)

Figure 4 shows the distribution for 500 values of the random parameters. The log distribution
for the permeability and the Gaussian distribution for the rest of the random parameters can be
seen.

11
 Figure 4: Histograms of random variable values: permeability k, skin S, tubing roughness e and choke discharge coefficient
Cd, for 500 realizations.

With a greater number of realizations, a smoother distribution shape can be observed and the
stochastic approach will be more representative. Therefore, five hundred realizations were
generated to achieve acceptable distribution shapes and simulation time. In addition, a
truncation function was generated for permeability, tubing roughness and choke discharge
coefficient to avoid negative values from the distributions that lead to unfeasible values of pwf
and ptf (see Appendix A - Matlab files).

Table 1: Parameters used for stochastic simulation

Wellbore area Standard Well and wellhead choke Standard
random parameters Mean deviation random parameters Mean deviation
Permeability k [m2] 1.80E-13 3.00E-15 Tubing roughness e [m] 3.02E-05 1.00E-07
Skin S [-] 1 0.8 Discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.8 0.1

12
3.3 Data Assimilation with Ensemble Kalman Filtering
After defining the stochastic production engineering models, the EnKF was implemented to
adapt the selected uncertain parameters for tuning measured and predicted data. Nowadays,
this data assimilation process is widely used for numerical weather predictions in atmospheric
and oceanographic sciences, and more recently also in reservoir engineering.
The EnKF is an extended model of the Kalman filter. The Kalman filter estimates the state of
a linear dynamic system from a set of measurements with noise. The Kalman filter is based on
a model equation, where the state of the system has uncertainty, and (noisy) observations. Key
assumptions are linearity of the model equations and Gaussian distributions of the uncertain
state variables and the measurement noise.
The EnKF works with non-linear models compared to the Kalman filter, which assumes
Gaussian distributions and a linear system. It generates ensembles using Monte Carlo
methods and it gives a systematic method to calculate the time evolution of measured data
errors according to the dynamics of the simulated model (Houtekamer and Mitchell, 1998)
using probabilistic tools. EnKFs represent the distribution of the simulated model using an
ensemble that involves randomization of data and replaces its covariance matrix by the
measured data covariance matrix (Mandel, 2009).
The ensembles:
The distribution of random variables is represented by a collection of realizations, called an
ensemble (Mandel, 2009).
, For the model (simulated model) n x N matrix
, For the observation (true data) m x N matrix
The ensemble X refers to the simulated data created by the stochastic model (also called a
state model). The ensemble D refers to observations (true data) where the columns of D are
copies of the measurements with different simulated noise realizations. Ensemble X is also
called the prior ensemble since it was created before the implementation of the EnKF
algorithm.
Formulation:
For the ensemble matrix X and the data matrix D, the mean and the covariance are defined
respectively as:

1 N
T
E X
N
x
k 1
k 1 ,

(3.2)

T
XX
C , (3.3)
N 1
where
X E( X )
X (3.4)

The posterior ensemble Xposterior is then given by (Aanonsen et al., 2009)

13
 X posterior X CH T ( HCH T R ) 1 D HX , (3.5)

where

K CH T (HCH T R)1 (3.6)

is known as the Kalman gain matrix and has a dimension of (6X2). R is the observation error
covariance matrix that comes from the true data of the D ensemble and was calculated as
shown in Equation (3.3). H is the so-called observation matrix. Equation (3.5) depicts the data
assimilation algorithm or the posterior ensemble estimated from the corrected uncertainty of
the state system with the observation network.
The Xprior ensemble was defined from the stochastic routines created for the production
system which links the inflow performance, vertical multiphase flow calculations and choke
performance calculations.
Ensembles:
ptf 1 ptf N
p pwf N
wf 1 p ptf N
k kN D tf 1
1
p wf 1 pwf
X prior (3.7) (3.8)
e1 eN N
2XN
S1 SN

Cd 1 Cd N 6XN

The ensemble Xprior was created with N number of values of flowing tubing head pressure, ptf
and flowing bottom hole pressure, pwf using the random variables log k, e, S and Cd.
Moreover, the D ensemble was obtained by calculating one value of ptf and pwf using
deterministic data and a perturbation was added using a Gaussian distribution to depict noise
in the measurements.
The observation matrix H was defined as:
1 0 0 0 0 0
H (3.9)
0 1 0 0 0 0 2X6
In this case the matrix consisted of two rows because two variables, ptf and pwf, were obtained
from the observed data of the D ensemble. The H matrix interpolates the simulated state to the
observed data as can be observed in the matrix (3.10).
ptf 1 ptf N
HX prior
pwf N
(3.10)
pwf 1 2XN

14
To introduce dependency, the ensemble covariance was calculated from all the ensemble
members by following Equation (3.3). The covariance matrix C is calculated for the Xprior
T matrixes.
ensemble, using the X and X
ptf 1 - ptf ptf N - ptf

pwf 1 - pwf pwf N - pwf

kN - k
X k1 - k
(3.11)
e - eN - e
1 e
S1 - S S N - S

Cd 1 - Cd Cd N - Cd
6XN

The same step is used to define the covariance matrix R for the D ensemble. This matrix
depicts the estimation of the error in the observation network. Furthermore, the dimension of
R becomes quadratic according to the number of rows of D. Therefore, for one row, ensemble
R will become a scalar. In this case, the dimension of R is (2X2).
By applying Equation (3.6), the Kalman gain matrix K was calculated.

15
3.4 Twin Experiments with Synthetic Data
The data assimilation algorithm requires two sets of data as mentioned in the previous
chapter. This is the simulated model data and the observation or measured data. One of the
limitations of this research is that it was not possible to obtain authentic production data with
noise from a well. To deal with this limitation, twin experiments were done by generating
synthetic data using a deterministic variable production engineering Matlab code, in order to
describe the observation data of our D ensemble. Figure 5 illustrates the authentic measured
data that comes from a well that was represented by twin experiments.

Figure 5: Measured data acquisition flow chart.

16
4 Application
4.1 Model

4.1.1 Base Model

Figures 6, 7 and 8 show the base model of the inflow performance, tubing performance and
choke performance curve with deterministic data. The curves were generated using the Matlab
codes from the AES Production Optimization course AES1360. This base model was used to
develop the stochastic models and furthermore the ensemble Kalman filtering. The base
model considers steady state condition, multiphase flow, Standing and Katz correlations along
with Mukherjee and Brill correlations for flow in pipelines (Jansen, 2016).

Figure 6: IPR curve for base model Figure 7: Tubing performance curve for base model

Figure 8: Tubing and choke performance curve for base model

17
4.1.2 Sensitivity Analysis
A sensitivity analysis was carried out for the variables of the Productivity Index equation
(4.1) for a semi-steady state flow and for the semi-empirical expression of the pressure drop
in incompressible liquid flow for flow-through restrictions (4.2). This allowed us to pin-point
which variable is more sensitive to a relative change in the parameters. Permeability, skin and
choke discharge coefficient, which are parameters chosen to be random, appear within these
two equations. In addition, this analysis also showed an intuitive knowledge of how the
parameters would affect the stochastic model by having uncertainty.
2kh
J= , (4.1)
r
Bo ln e - f R + S
rw

q2
P = . (4.2)
2A2Cd 2

Figure 9 showed that permeability is more sensitive than other parameters, followed by the oil
volume factor and viscosity. By doubling the well radius, an increase in PI by a factor of 1.09
was obtained. When the external radius and skin was doubled, a decrease in PI by a factor of
0.92 and 0.87 was obtained, a smaller impact compared to the first parameters mentioned.
This behavior is because of the logarithm term in Equation (4.1).

As can be seen in Figure 10, the choke discharge coefficient and the area depict the same
behavior. The fluid density was showed to be less sensitive. After observing Equation (4.2), it
is obvious that the fluid rate would be as sensitive as the area and the choke discharge
coefficient because of its quadratic relationship. However, in practice the exact values of the
choke discharge coefficients are empirical compared to the area and the rates which are
known parameters.

Figure 9: Spider chart for variables in PI equation Figure 10: Spider chart for variables in pressure drop
equation for incompressible flow-through restriction

18
4.1.3 Stochastic Model
The stochastic output generated was for inflow performance, tubing performance and choke
performance which gives the relationship between flow rate and pressure from the near-
wellbore area to the well head choke. Figures 11, 12 and 13 show all the curves generated for
500 different combinations of the random variables mentioned in Chapter 3.
Overall the stochastic models for the inflow performance, tubing performance and choke
performance curves used multiphase gas oil water flow (Mukherjee and Brill correlation),
black oil models with the aid of Standing correlations and semi-steady state conditions.

Figure 12: Stochastic inflow performance curves. Figure 11: Stochastic tubing performance curves.

Figure 13: Stochastic choke performance curves.

19
Figure 14 shows the values of ptf; which are the intersections (operating points) between the
tubing performance curve and choke performance curve for 500 realizations. The values of pwf
were derived downstream and are shown in Figure 15. It can be observed that the range of
values for ptf and pwf resulting from the simulation tend to be the highest of all the possible
outputs. This means that the standard deviation used for the random parameters was small
enough to generate curves that intersect between 2.8X106 Pa and 3X106 Pa for ptf and between
2.15X107 Pa and 2.18X107 Pa for pwf. These values were eventually used to create the
simulated prior ensemble for the EnKF.

Figure 15: Histograms of ptf and qo operative values. Figure 14: Histograms of pwf and qo operative values.

Figure 16: Stochastic tubing and choke performance curves.

20
4.2 Synthetic Data
To generate synthetic data, a tubing performance and choke performance curves were
generated using deterministic parameters. This allowed the generation of values of ptf and pwf.

Table 2: Deterministic parameters used to generate synthetic data

Parameter Value
2
Permeability k [m ] 2.00E-13

Skin S [-] 0.2

Tubing roughness e [m] 3.05E-05

Choke discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.7

To depict the noise from field measurements, a perturbation was added to the calculated
operative values.
These perturbations were defined as Gaussian distributions obtaining N values for ptf and pwf ,
allowing the true data ensemble D to be constructed.
The perturbation used for the true ptf measurements was 0.15x106 Pa which is the standard
deviation applied to measure the unpredictability of the random noise signal. For the true pwf
measurements, the noise applied was 0.15x107 Pa.

21
4.3 Data Assimilation Results
Figures 18 and 19 show the results of EnKF for the ptf and pwf. The spread of the values from
the distributions for the ptf and pwf of the posterior ensemble was reduced compared to the
values of the prior ensemble. In addition, they move closer to the measured value. The result
of the EnKF for permeability is shown in Figure 17. Although the spread of the posterior
distribution was reduced as well and more regular than the prior distribution, it is not possible
to observe a match that is closer to the measured value.

Figure 17: EnKF results for permeability

Figure 18: EnKF results for flowing tubing head pressure Figure 19: EnKF results for flowing bottom hole pressure

22
The results of the EnKF for the rest of the random variables are shown in figures 20, 21 and
22. A slight variation in the shapes between the mean of the prior and posterior ensembles can
be observed. In addition, the posterior ensemble does not show a shift towards the measured
value. To observe if there was an approximation to the measured value, the mean of the
posterior distributions was calculated.

Figure 20: EnKF results for skin Figure 21: EnKF results for tubing roughness

Figure 22: EnKF results for choke discharge coefficient

23
Table 3 shows the mean values of the prior and posterior ensembles for ptf, pwf and for the
random parameters after implementing the EnKF. Table 4 illustrates the difference achieved
by the prior and posterior ensembles against the measured data. It can be observed that the
value of the mean of the posterior ensemble for the permeability is higher than the mean of
the prior ensemble and the measured data. To understand this behavior a correlation
coefficients matrix was calculated and is shown in Figure 23. The values in the correlation
matrix that are less than 0 indicate a negative association; that is, as the value of one variable
increases, the value of the other variable decreases. A value greater than 0 indicates a positive
association; that is, as the value of one variable increases, so does the value of the other
variable. Figure 23 illustrates that the ptf, pwf and permeability are strongly positively
correlated because their values are close to one. Furthermore, the tubing roughness, skin and
choked discharge coefficient showed a weak correlation because their coefficients are close to
0. This might be an explanation of the poor difference achieved by the posterior ensemble.

Table 3: Comparison of posterior and prior ensembles with measured data

Mean of measured Mean of prior Mean of posterior
Random parameters
data ensemble ensemble
Tubing head pressure ptf [Pa] 2.745E+06 2.490E+06 2.716E+06
Bottom hole pressure pwf [Pa] 2.138E+07 2.098E+07 2.132E+07
Permeability k [m2] 2.200E-13 1.800E-13 2.938E-13
Skin S [-] 0.8 1 0.9556
Tubing roughness e [m] 3.0500E-05 3.0200E-05 3.0205E-05
Choke discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.7 0.8 0.8007

Table 4: Difference comparison of prior and posterior ensembles with measured data

Diff in Prior and Diff in posterior

Random parameters
measured data and measured data
Tubing head pressure ptf [Pa] 2.546E+05 2.840E+04
Bottom hole pressure pwf [Pa] 4.060E+05 6.400E+04
Permeability k [m2] 4.000E-14 7.378E-14
Skin S [-] 0.200 0.156
Tubing roughness e [m] 3.000E-07 2.950E-07
Choke discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.100 0.101

24
 ptf p wf k e S Cd
p 1 0.9989 0.9302 0.0444 0.1366 0.0767
tf
p wf 0.9989 1 0.9279 0.0444 -0.1356 -0.1120

A k 0.9302 0.9279 1 0.0522 -0.0878 -0.0151
e 0.0444 0.0444 0.0522 1 -0.0036 0.0148

S 0.1366 -0.1356 -0.0878 -0.0036 1 -0.0157
C 0.0767
d -0 .1120 -0.0151 0.0148 -0.0157 1
Figure 23: Correlation matrix of ensemble parameters

The limited success of the EnKF to improve the estimates of the uncertain parameters may be
caused by the nonlinear nature of the nodal analysis equations. Moreover, the computed
variables pwf and ptf in the posterior ensemble are no longer consistent with updated
parameters k, e, S and Cd. To improve the latter shortcoming an attempt was made to apply an
iterative procedure. This procedure consisted of repeating the EnKF process by taking the
parameters in the calculated posterior ensemble as a new prior ensemble. Five iterations were
done in order to maintain an acceptable simulation time. Figures 24 to 29 show the results of
the iterative procedure for ptf, pwf and the random parameters. A major difference between the
first posterior ensemble distribution and the iterated distribution cannot be observed. On the
other hand, the mean values of the iterated ensemble for the ptf and pwf shown in Table 5
presented a somewhat better match with the mean value of the measured data. Moreover, for
the mean values of the skin, tubing roughness and choke discharge coefficient after the
iterations, a slight but more accurate change towards the measured data was achieved. In
addition, Table 6 shows the narrowed difference between the iterated ensemble and the
measured data.

Figure 24: EnKF results for permeability after iterations.

25
Figure 25: EnKF results for flowing tubing head Figure 26: EnKF results for flowing bottom hole
pressure after iterations. pressure after iterations.

Figure 28: EnKF results for skin after iterations. Figure 27: EnKF results for tubing roughness after iterations.

Figure 29: EnKF results for choke discharge coefficient.

26
Table 5: Comparison of prior ensemble and posterior ensemble before and after iterations with measured data.
Mean of posterior
Mean of measured Mean of prior Mean of posterior
Random parameters ensemble after 5
data ensemble ensemble
iterations
Tubing head pressure ptf [Pa] 2.745E+06 2.554E+06 2.725E+06 2.746E+06
Bottom hole pressure pwf [Pa] 2.138E+07 2.108E+07 2.134E+07 2.137E+07
Permeability k [m2] 2.200E-13 1.800E-13 2.778E-13 2.803E-13
Skin S [-] 0.8 1 0.9207 0.9186
Tubing roughness e [m] 3.0500E-05 3.0200E-05 3.0203E-05 3.0204E-05
Choke discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.7 0.8 0.7959 0.7958

Table 6: Difference comparison of posterior ensembles before and after iterations with measured data.

Diff in posterior Diff in iterated

Random parameters
and measured data and measured data
Tubing head pressure ptf [Pa] 1.980E+04 1.000E+03
Bottom hole pressure pwf [Pa] 4.900E+04 1.700E+04
Permeability k [m2] 5.779E-14 6.027E-14
Skin S [-] 0.1207 0.1186
Tubing roughness e [m] 2.970E-07 2.960E-07
Choke discharge coefficient Cd [-] 0.0959 0.0958

ptf p wf k e S Cd
p 1 0.9922 0.6488 0.0642 0.0184 0.0159
tf
p wf 0.9922 1 0.6277 0.0641 -0.0135 -0.1258

A k 0.6488 0.6277 1 0.0334 0.1158 0.1135
e 0.0642 0.0641 0.0334 1 -0.0218 0.0051

S 0.0184 -0.0135 0.1158 -0.0218 1 -0.0601
C 0.0159
d -0.12 58 0.1135 0.0051 -0.0601 1
Figure 30: Correlation matrix of ensemble parameters after iterations.

27
5 Conclusions
The use of random variables can be successfully applied to generate ensembles of
upstream and downstream performance curves which can subsequently be used to
generate ensembles of operating points.
For the example considered the use of the ensemble Kalman filter method to improve
the estimate of uncertain production parameters was attempted with limited success.
The posterior ensembles showed a reduction in the variance, but the mean values did
not move much toward the true values.
Further research is required to assess the applicability of data assimilation methods to
enable the use of uncertain production data in nodal analysis.

28
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