An Intensive Study Using Steady State Simulator in Conjunction with Transient Simulator Led to Incremental Production with 1000 BOPD

Abstract Gas lift is a widely used artificial lift method in the oil and gas industry that is used to enhance oil well production, especially when there is insufficient reservoir pressure to lift the fluid to the surface. Nevertheless, this application used to face several challenges which affected its processes and led to investing more costs to keep its operations running successfully. This project summarizes a comprehensive study aimed at optimizing the gas lift operations so that can restore the underperforming wells productivity with minimum cost and logistics for one of the crucial offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company (GUPCO) in Egypt operated by Dragon Oil Company. While the flowing survey approach is the most precise way to determine the point of injection in gas lift wells, it is not feasible to run in the wells that experience unsteady state phenomena such as high surge in the well head pressure and heavy oil slugs that restricts the run-in hole operation and in turn no surveillance is acquired. To overcome this issue two approaches were used: steady state modelling and transient modelling to solve the gas lift dynamic issues. Although multi-point of injection gas lift system and slugging phenomena are not of the applications of the steady state simulator however in this paper a new methodology has been applied to compensate for this point. The findings of both modelling methods provide valuable insights into the problem diagnostics, operation, and determination of the well intervention plan using multiple scenarios, including a cleanup program for both the wellbores & the gas lift mandrels, and detecting the plugged valves that will need replacement with new valves. The project resulted in increasing the net oil gain for the platform under study by 1000 BOPD) after applying some wellbores cleaning in one well that succeeded to clean up the plugged GLM in addition to the valves replacement in two other wells as recommended by the models results approach. The study also includes intensive comparison between steady state and transient modeling in terms of results and range of applicability. This study marks an ideal solution for perfecting the gas lift applications in GUPCO, since it is the first trial to apply a transient modeling approach in conjunction with the steady state modelling with the new technique while driving the gas lift operations, which elapsed the unstable production incidents & multi-point of injection phenomena. Moreover, this work clarified when to use the steady state model and when it is essential to use the transient modeling