Hi BearcatBob,
You will appreciate that NO oil or gas reservoir is infinite. Hence, no production is ever truly "steady state" and we must settle for the next best thing, "pseudo-steady state flow". (Sorry, Nate!!)
Lacking both an absolute knowledge of what the reserves are and what the sandface deliverability curve for the 2-22 well is, I can only "speculate" as to what the long term production profile for the well would be. [As you know, I do speculate that the well will come on stream at ~9 MMCF/d not 4.8 MMCF/d which was the flow against 2,375 psig wellhead pressure on the production test.]
Of course, the greater the reserve (ie. the more infinite acting that the reservoir is), the longer it will be before any "appreciable decline" in production will occur. And, of course, the greater the production rate the earlier that a decline in deliverability will be apparent.
For reserves of the magnitude that I estimate, I would not expect a "significant" decline in production capability over the course of the first couple years of production. In fact, if the well is produced at a rate of only 4.8 MMCF/d initially, then I doubt that there would be ANY decline in rate over the first several years. Instead, during that time the flowing tubinghead pressure would decline below 2,375 psig as the choke were periodically opened more and more.
On the other hand, if the well comes on initially at ~9 MMCF/d against 1,000 psig line pressure and that line pressure is held constant, then necessarily there will be a decline in the well deliverability as reservoir pressure is depleted by production. But, the relationship is not linear and lacking both actual deliverability data for the well and absolute knowledge of what the reserves are, I can only speculate as to the magnitude of that decline. I personally doubt that the decline would exceed 7-10%/year (given my own belief and expectation of reserves).
Later,
grayhairs |
