The state-of-the-art in natural gas production

Key issues in high-performance natural gas wells

“…A primary one is increasing productivity with long wellbore and reducing turbulence, relatively, compared with vertical gas wells. This does not mean that turbulence can be neglected in horizontal wells (Wang andEconomides, 2009b, 2009a).…”

“…After the invention of the tip screenout (TSO) technique, hydraulic fracturing of highpermeability formations (fracpack) has become wide spread in petroleum engineering and is absolutely essential in highpermeability gas wells (Wang and Economides, 2004). A fracture is not only designed to bypass damage near a wellbore and prevent formation sand production, but it also reduces the near-wellbore turbulence effects through the modification of the flow pattern towards the well (Wang and Economides, 2004;Wang, 2009).…”

“…1b), flow paths into the wells are altered and the near-wellbore turbulence is reduced considerably (Wang, 2009), although turbulence effects are, of course, present inside the fracture and the fracture geometry needs to be adjusted. This creates a considerable production improvement for fractured wells and the folds of production increase (FoI) become far larger than the FoI of oil wells of comparable permeability (Marongiu-Porcu et al, 2009).…”

Molecular Dynamics Investigation into the High Permeability and High Selectivity of Nano-Porous Polyimide Membranes for the “Green” Separation of Natural Gas

“…Natural gas is of a great importance to both the petrochemical industry and power-producing plants [1]. It supplies petrochemical precursors such as ethane, propane, butane, etc., which will be converted later to plastics, rubbers, paints, adhesives, coatings and medicines as well as, of course, methane, which is an excellent energy source.…”

“…The same is also true for greenhouse gases such as CH 4 , CO 2 and CFC s or mixtures of exhaust gases such as NO 2 , SO 2 and CO 2 known as acidrain gases. Normally, cryogenic separation involving liquefaction and distillation of the gas mixture is used extensively [1]. However, recently this energy-intensive process has forced the industry to explore other environmentally friendly routes for the separation of gases through selective membranes, which allow the permeation of one gas type only through the membrane on the expense of other types of gases.…”