Gas Lift Optimization of an Oil Field in Malaysia

Abstract

Gas lift is an artificial lift method which is commonly used in offshore operation with sufficient gas sources as it consumes minimum space on the platform. Gas lift operates by injecting a high pressure gas down through the tubing casing annulus of a well and the injected gas enters the tubing through a gas lift valve installed on the tubing. Gas lift increases production by two means, density reduction of oil column inside the tubing so that the flowing bottom-hole pressure which is affected by the hydrostatic pressure of the fluid column is reduced and by providing external energy to the oil as the gas expends.Reducing the bottom-hole pressure will improve the drawdown of the well. A production well is modelled by using a production modelling program, Integrated Production Modeling (IPM) Prosper to analyze the production performance at various conditions. A base case model is developed from the production data of an actual oil field to simulate the performance of the actual well without gas lift system. Later, the gas lift is added to the model and the performance was compared with the base case model. The gas parameter was also studied to determine the optimum injection gas condition for maximum oil production. The gas injected at 1490m can be achieved by injecting the gas with 1200 psi, l300 psi or 1400 psi. However, the optimum gas injection pressure was determined to be at 1400 psi as the design shows that the required unloading stage is the least. The optimum gas injection rate was determined at 5 MMscf/d with the estimated net revenue is the highest. For injection gas gravity, the lighter gas was determined to be the optimum selection since it gives significant reduction of FBHP (Flowing Bottom Hole Pressure) with less hydrostatic pressure inside the tubing column.