Gas Lift Austria

Just returned from a two-week event in Austria, my third such event.  


This one was special given that it was about gas lift wells and that we had to do a review of 150 wells.  We focussed our efforts on 90% of the production which comes from the continuous lift wells.  I wrote a macro to create PROSPER files from an completed file and a spreadsheet of data.  We performed a standard analysis of each well, looking for opportunities to increase production by a combination of changing lift gas rate, lifting deeper or changing the tubing size.  It was very important to include the 1-2 km flowlines in this analysis.  Even though the wells are working at a high water cut, we managed to find opportunities to increase oil production over 20%.


During this event we toured the gas lift equipment repair shop.  We saw an example of creating conventional (not side pocket) mandrels from pup-joints.  

Shop built conventional gas lift mandrel

Also, we reviewed parts from their retrieved gas lift valves and found amazingly little wear.  These valves had been operating for several years and the stems and seats were almost like new.  The field has sales quality (dehydrated gas) and quite low gas lift injection rates, but still that was unexpected.  They did not have any special unloading procedure and only use working (IPO) valves, no orifice valves.  The valves stay in the ground for 5-10 years, typically.