Pressure gradient determination in production and injection wells is essential to obtain information concerning the effects of flow-rate, pipe size, and pressure on each other. This factor is also used to estimate the power and gas injection-rate requirements for lifting the oil in the case of gas-lift operations.

Although the theory and methods for predicting the pressure gradient in the vertical pipe in which gas, oil, and water are flowing have been developed, the majority of techniques require graphical procedures to calculate the pressure gradients which result in the between 10% to 20% errors.

The present method utilizes the fluid density tool to estimate the density of the fluid in the vertical pipe for determining the pressure gradients when two or three phases are encountered. This technique is much shorter than those given in the literature, and does not include any graphical procedure. Furthermore, the pressure profile can be predicted with higher accuracy than those other methods.

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