Loading...

Design of a gas lift system to increase oil production from an Iranian offshore well with high water cut

Beiranvand, M. S ; Sharif University of Technology

543 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. Abstract:
  3. One of the most important production issues in oil fields is high water production which may lead to wells killing and reduction in an economical production period. With the increment of water production or decrease of reservoir pressure, reservoir drawdown pressure reduces which causes reduction in oil production rate. To preserve the reservoir production, we should apply one of the proposed methods; namely, increasing the reservoir pressure, preventing water source invasion or using artificial lift technique. To compensate this reduction, continuous gas injection into the wells can be used. The injected gas combines with fluid in tubing and the density of the fluid decreases, thereby reducing the hydrostatic pressure loss along the flow path. By utilizing this method fluid can be produced in low flowing pressure through tubing. In this study, the offshore R-1 well was revived using artificial lift methodology to achieve incremental reserve recovery after the well had stopped producing due to water production. In this oilfield, as the water cut reaches at 50%, the wells die. A common solution to overcome this hydrostatic pressure is to utilize some sort of artificial lift via gas lift or pumping. Due to high water production of the wells, abundance of gas and low operating cost, we propose gas lift technique as the best solution. By an accurate gas lift design, we can have a rational production from the well with high water cut even more than 90%. Implementation of this method, allows oil production as reserves are depleted and the oil water contact moves up. The present results, established through simulation, seem to be reasonable according to validity comparison with the field data, and hence may be generalized to the other wells with similar conditions
  4. Keywords:
  5. Drawdown Pressure ; Gas lift ; Offshore Field ; Water Cut
  6. Source: Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences ; Volume 5, Issue 11 , 2011 , Pages 1561-1565 ; 19918178 (ISSN)
  7. URL: http://ajbasweb.com/old/ajbas/2011/November-2011/1561-1565.pdf