A New Concept of Continuous Flow Gas Lift By Multipoint Injection

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. This paper was prepared for the 42nd Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Houston, Tex., Oct.1–4, 1967. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Continuous flow gas lift by single point injection is generally considered to be the most efficient method of lifting fluid from an oil well. However, for points of injection below 4000 feet, a homogeneous mixture of the gas and liquid from the point of injection to the surface is usually not realized in actual field operations. The liquid tends to separate from the gas causing turbulence and/or slippage which results in slug type lift. This paper is a result of a detailed analysis of four (4) installations designed for continuous flow gas lift by multipoint injection plus three years of numerous field applications. In the absence of accurate flowing pressure surveys on three of the wells, it was necessary to use other means of determining points of injection. However, this was not difficult in most cases because several design changes were required on each well before continuous flow was achieved. Additionally, these were problem gas lift wells prior to the installation of the multipoint designs and the maximum points of injection were known. The relative merits of multipoint versus single point injection for continuous flow gas lift can only be determined conclusively by extensive experimental work. Nevertheless, the results of the tests conducted thus far, though admittedly limited in scope, do indicate:A variance between flowing pressure gradient predictions based on published curves and actual gradients obtained by multipoint injection.That deeper points of injection and higher rates of production are possible by multipoint injection than was ever before attainable by continuous flow gas lift.