Optimum allocation of carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas between wells of an oil field in the artificial gas lift process

Abu-Bakri, Jalal; Jafari, Arezou; Namdar, Hamed; Ahmadi, Goodarz

Optimum allocation of carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas between wells of an oil field in the artificial gas lift process

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

J. Abu-Bakri ¹

A. Jafari ¹

H. Namdar ¹

G. Ahmadi ²

¹ Petroleum Engineering Department, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

² Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Department, Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering, Clarkson University

Abstract

Research topic:

Gas lift is an efficient artificial lift strategy, routinely used to overcome the low productivity of the wells. In this research, the possibility of using two gases, carbon dioxide and nitrogen instead of natural gas, in the gas lifting process is investigated and compared. To maximize oil production, the optimization of the allocation of the limited amount of gas between 10 wells in the Iranian offshore brown oil field is performed.

Research Method:

In this research, all the wells were modeled by PROSPER software. First, all 10 wells data of an Iranian offshore oil reservoir were collected. Secondly, their model has been built and after validation, a simulation of the artificial gas lift was performed using carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas separately, then, the Gas Lift Performance Curve (GLPC) of all the wells are fitted with the appropriate experimental model in MATLAB software. In the following, using Solver Excel, the allocation optimization with a limited amount of gas was performed using two different gases.

Main results:

According to the results obtained from the optimization, for a certain amount of available gas which is 15 MMSCFD, the total Oil production in the case of nitrogen gas injection is 3564 STBD more than carbon dioxide gas injection. Also, in all cases, due to the production potential capacity of well No. 8, the most amount of injected gas is allocated to it. The comparison of the two types of injected gas shows that the quantity of oil produced using nitrogen is 3424 and 3302 STBD (28 % and 24 %) greater than carbon dioxide gas when the gas is lowered to 12 and 9 MMSCFD, respectively.

Keywords

Optimization

Artificial Gas Lift

Oil production

Carbon Dioxide

Nitrogen

Subjects

Petroleum Engineering

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