Gas lift optimization using smart gas lift valve

Gas lift is one of the most common forms of artificial lift, particularly for offshore wells because of its relative down hole simplicity, flexibility, reliability, and ability to operate over a large range of rates and occupy very little space at the well head. Presently, petroleum industry is investing in exploration and development fields in offshore locations where oil and gas wells are being drilled thousands of feet below the ocean in high pressure and temperature conditions. Therefore, gas-lifted oil wells are capable of failure through gas lift valves which are considered as the heart of the gas lift system for controlling the amount of the gas inside the tubing string. The gas injection rate through gas lift valve must be controlled to be sufficient to obtain and maintain critical flow, also, gas lift valves must be designed not only to allow gas passage through it and prevent oil passage, but also for gas injection into wells to be started and stopped when needed. In this paper, smart gas lift valve has been used to investigate the effect of the valve port size, depth of injection and vertical lift performance on well productivity; all these aspects have been investigated using PROSPER simulator program coupled with experimental data. The results show that by using smart gas lift valve, the gas injection rate can be controlled which leads to improved flow performance

Real-time gas lift valve to enhance well performance

Optimum production from a gas lift well mainly depends on proper injection gas quantity; injection pressure and depth of injection and gas lift valve performance. The quality of down hole gas lift valves plays a crucial role in achieving maximum efficiency of a gas lift system and uninterrupted oil and gas production. Gas lift valves can aid in the unloading and produce of a well. With the valves properly spaced and correctly pressured and proper selection of the port size, unloading proceeds in a stage-by-stage, valve-by-valve manner to the ideal point of lift, and maximum liquid production is reached. But if well situations change or if the gas lift design data was not very perfect, maximum liquid production is not achieved. Improper valve location, improper setting of operating pressures and gas pass at more than one point can stop wells from achieving maximum production. In this paper, smart gas lift valve which allows the port size of the gas lift to be remotely adjusted from the surface used computer program to determination of gas passage through the valve in order to distil real-time data on gas lift valve, on their turn these data are finally used for implementing conscious and forward looking control actions, ultimate results are, improved production profitability due to increased production rate, decreased operations cost and developed availability. Also the paper will address how smart gas lift valve will gain large benefits with different scenarios in natural flow and gas lift wells, will be illustrated in this paper; also investigate the effect of the valve port size, depth of injection on well productivity. The results show that smart gas lift valve can be used to control the amount of gas injection from down hole that leads to improve tubing well head pressure and enhanced well production and also indicated that the optimum opening is at 50% for both injection pressure rates