Gas Lift Performance of Some Horizontal Wells in Ahdeb Oil Field

Abstract

Ahdeb is one of the Iraqi oil fields, its crude characterized by medium API (22.5-28.9) and highly reservoir pressure depletion from Khasib formation due to lack of water drive. This makes it difficult to produce economic oil rates. Therefore, many water injection wells were drilled by the operators to maintain the reservoir pressure during production. In addition to that, electrical submersible pumps (ESP) were used in some productive wells. This study suggests exploitation of gas associated with oil production to be recycled to lift oil as a substitute for the ESP .The work in this study includes using PIPSIM software to build a model of four studied productive wells (AD1-11-2H, AD2-15-2H, AD4-13-3H, A4-19-1H) after choosing the suited correlation for each well. According to the statistical results, Mukherjee & Brill correlation is the best option for all wells.

The use of PIPESIM software include determining artificial lift performance to determine the optimum amount of gas injected, optimum injection pressure as well as the optimum injection depth and knowing the impact of these factors on production, as well as the determination of the optimal injection conditions when water cut changes. According to the current circumstances of the wells, the depth optimized for injection is the maximum allowable depth of injection which is deeper than the packer by 100 ft and the amount of injection gas is (1.5, 1, 1, and 1) MMscf/day for wells (AD2-11-2H, AD2-15-2H, AD4-13-3H, and AD4-19-2H) sequentially and injection pressure (2050, 2050, 2050, and 2000) psi for wells (AD2-11-2H, AD2-15-2H, AD4-13-3H, and AD4-19-2H) sequentially.