Using Hydraulic Modeling Software to Design, Plan, Optimize, and Operate a 200,000 BPD Produced Water Gathering System

In the U.S. oil and gas world, produced water (or sometimes called saltwater) is a major bi-product of drilling and completion of a well. Saltwater is a naturally occurring component down in the far depths of the earth that comes to the surface as a result of drilling and completing an oil and gas well. After a well has been drilled, high volumes of water are injected into the well to pressurize, fracture, and stimulate the production of oil and gas from the very far depths of the well, and bring it to the surface where it is sold to market. The saltwater bi-product must be safely disposed of either by trucking offsite to a disposal location or by piping it offsite to a disposal center. In most cases, piping of the water is more economically feasible than trucking the water offsite. If the water cannot be safely disposed of offsite, a well must be shut in resulting in thousands of dollars of lost revenue. Therefore, it is imperative to any producer that owns and operates a saltwater gathering system to properly design, plan, optimize, and operate the gathering system to avoid shutting in a well, and loss of revenue. Most saltwater gathering systems are large and complex requiring extensive work to insure the system runs efficiently and smoothly to not require a well to be shut in because the system cannot handle the saltwater that is produced from the well. In order to more efficiently design, plan, optimize, and operate a complex saltwater gathering system, a hydraulic modeling software system is a great asset and benefit to any producer who wants to insure they have an accurate and reliable tool. The purpose of this paper is to provide real world applications of using a hydraulic modeling software, to design, plan, optimize, and operate a 200,000 bpd produced water gathering system.