Standardized surface engineering design of shale gas reservoirs

Abstract

Due to the special physical properties of shale gas reservoirs, it is necessary to adopt unconventional and standardized technologies for its surface engineering construction. In addition, the surface engineering design of shale gas reservoirs in China faces many difficulties, such as high uncertainty of the gathering and transportation scale, poor adaptability of pipe network and station layout, difficult matching of the process equipments, and boosting production at the late stage. In view of these problems, the surface engineering construction of shale gas reservoirs should follow the principles of “standardized design, modularized construction and skid mounted equipment”. In this paper, standardized surface engineering design technologies for shale gas reservoirs were developed with the “standardized well station layout, universal process, modular function zoning, skid mounted equipment selection, intensive site design, digitized production management” as the core, after literature analysis and technology exploration were carried out. Then its application background and surface technology route were discussed with a typical shale gas field in Sichuan–Chongqing area as an example. Its surface gathering system was designed in a standardized way, including standardized process, the modularized gathering and transportation station, serialized dehydration unit and intensive layout, and remarkable effects were achieved. A flexible, practical and reliable ground production system was built, and a series of standardized technology and modularized design were completed, including cluster well platform, set station, supporting projects. In this way, a system applicable to domestic shale gas surface engineering construction is developed.

Keywords

• Shale gas
• Unconventional
• Surface engineering
• Gathering system
• Surface technology
• Standardized design
• Cluster wells
• Integration