Origins of and countermeasures for the abnormal pressures in well production of the Ojarly gas field in the Right Bank of the Amu-Darya River, Turkmenistan

The Ojarly gas field, the major supplier of the Project Phase Ⅱ of the Right Bank of the Amu Darya River, is just small but valuable like a golden bean, although it has good reservoir properties and a high gas production capacity, the occurrence of continuous sharp decline of pressure in the well production shows a great difference from the previous well test program. In view of this, an integrated analysis method was established for the whole gas well production process to discover the three main reasons causing the abnormal well pressure. First, the formation energy and pressure dropped so fast that the wellhead pressure also fell over the period. Second, there was abnormal fluids pressure drop in the wellbore tube and throttling effect might occur in the production tube, so the pressure drop became abnormally increased. Third, due to the abnormally-increasing gas-yield pressure drop and unusually-decreasing gas productivity, the wellhead oil pressure dropped significantly. Also, through dynamic monitoring and in-depth analysis, it is also considered that due to the high density of drilling fluids and well-developed pores and caverns in the reservoirs, more and more barites separated from the fluids would be settled down covering the pay zones, so both the gas-generating capacity and production pressure significantly decreased. On this basis, some technical countermeasures were taken such as re-stimulation of reservoirs, removal of gas-producing channels, increase of seepage capacity, etc. In addition, by use of sand-flushing and acidizing, both the comprehensive skin factor and the production pressure drop were reduced to improve the well gas production capacity and maintain high productivity effectively. This study provides a technical support for long-term sustainable development and production of this gas field.