Design of continuous gas-lift for a dead well and step-up of its productivity

Abstract

The present paper aims to design a continuous gas-lift system in order to activate the dead well X and optimise the recovery of hydrocarbons by gas injection. The data taken into account are those of the reservoir and the well. All the simulation operations and the well diagram are carried out with the PIPESIM 2017 2.0 software. Moreover, the nodal analysis of the dead well X is carried out by finding the injection pressure of the gas in the well. The number of valves to be installed, the optimal injection heights and the flow rates received by each valve are also included in the gas-lift device. Then the evaluation of the system performance as well as the sensitivity analysis are carried out to make it possible to fix the optimal flow rate of production. The results obtained show that for a continuous gas injection of 3 million standard ft3 per day (MMscf/d) per valve into the well with a wellhead pressure of 2,500 psi and an optimal flow rate of 2,718 standard barrels per day (STB/d), a profitability of USD 182,887,219 is obtained. In this field, this design can be applied to all wells having a production tube of 2.5 inches inside diameter. On the other hand, wells with different diameters will require a new evaluation.