Koriesh, Mahmoud, Gulf of Suez Petroleum company

Gas Lift Application for Heavy Oil:

Gas Lift is considered one of the oldest artificial lift techniques in Oil industry. Despite the
numerous publications about different aspects of gas lift, few of them is meant to deeply
consider the applicability of gas lift to heavy oil production. Gas Lift has been applied to heavy
oil in different places around the world for. Gas lift has been used in Gulf of Suez in Egypt
historically to produce Heavy Oil Reservoir with 17 – 19.5 API.

The decision to select Gas lift to produce heavy crude depends on various aspects , which
consider different engineering thoughts in addition to maximizing production rate. In this paper
we will classify them into three categories :

1. Operational Aspects
2. Heavy Oil Implications over Gas Lift
3. Reservoir Engineering Aspects.

Operational Aspects:
Gas Lift allows easy operation for two different reasons:

1. Accessibility :
Standard Gas Lift mandrel uses sidepocket
design to have full ID accessibility to the well
as shown in figure 1

Full Accessibility to the well gives gas lift Figure 1 Gas Lift Sidepocket mandrel
competitive advantage when compared to
other pumping artificial lift especially for offshore applications where rig takes most of
the operation cost. Accessibility allows Rigless intervention to the well, better &
frequent reservoir surveillance, Rigless Water shut off & Rigless Recompletion if
required. Moreover gas lift repairs are in most of the cases slickline based operations to
change valves which is not comparable in terms of cost to work over requirements to
pull a pump in other pumping completions.

2. Cheaper Operating Cost :

The Long Running Life of gas lift completion gives another advantage to gas lift over
pumping completions especially for offshore application. A well can be produced for its
whole life with single completion. Which way ahead of best ESP Run life in similar
situation, figure 2 shows statistics showing the run life per completion in heavy oil field
in Gulf of Suez in Egypt showing Most of the wells exceeded 10 years with single
completion and still running & some cases approached 20 years of production with
single completion.
 Figure 2 Statistics of Gas Lift Completion Run Life in GOS

Heavy Oil Implications over Gas Lift:

The characteristics of heavy oil is quite challenging to all artificial lift methods in general & to
Gas Lift technology in specific. The reason behind is much related common heavy oil PVT
behavior & Chemistry.

1. Low GOR Heavy Oil:

The physics of gas lift operations relies on using compressors to pressurize gas
which is injected through tubing & Annulus to gas lift mandrel &
Valve the gas enters the tubing and mixes with production fluids
which decreases the density and hence allows lower pressure at the
sandface so that drawdown and sustainable production is
achieved, the gas is then separated at surface through separator and
sent back to compressor and the cycle repeats as shown in Figure 3.

The typical required gas liquid ratio to achieve optimum production from gas lift is
in the range of 700 to 1000 SCF/BBL. Which is very challenging for heavy
oil reservoirs to provide. Heavy oil crudes are characterized by low GOR, in GOS
heavy crudes show 40 to 230 scf/bbl. The low GOR would not supply
enough gas to start up compressors and would not allow steady
operations. That is why the main challenge to use gas lift with heavy oil production is
to find a nearby gas source to have a smooth operation.
Figure 3 Typical Gas Lift System Cycle
 2. Production Chemistry
The chemistry of heavy crude makes more challenges
downhole oil producers. The main challenges are
summarized in figure 4 some of them can be either
mitigated or lived with while one of them is very crucial
and show stopper for gas lift.

Pour Point:
The complex chemistry of heavy crude gives rise to
special considerations like the pour point which
represents the temperature at which crude will lose its
flow characteristics and will not be producible. The higher
the pour point temperature the worse the situation since Figure 4 Downhole Heavy Oil Production
crude would gel at higher temperature inside wellbore. In this Chemistry Challenges
situation gas lift is not the best for this kind of crude since the entry of gas causes temperature
drop due to joule-Thompson expansion which would narrow the operating window for the well
and also the gas lift does not include any mitigation to avoid waxing during shut in conditions
while the well is shut in, commonly in this situation diluent injection is considered most efficient
and safest way for production.

Emulsion Formation
Many of the heavy crudes contains amount of asphaltenes. Asphaltenes help the formation of
stable emulsions which affect the performance of gas lift wells dramatically, formation of
emulsions causes higher pressure drops across wellbore and requires much higher bottomhole
flowing pressure to produce the same rate to surface if it flowed without emulsions. However
the available chemistry solutions covered wide range of crudes and if used proper doses
emulsion can be under control.

Organic Deposits:
Availability of High Paraffin and Asphaltene content in heavy crudes makes the risk of having
organic deposits. The severity of the problem is slightly higher when using gas lift. Depending on
wax appearance temperature the effect of cooling of gas lift would accelerate the formation of
wax, however it is a matter of a full system analysis increasing gas would increase production
rate and heat up the well and minimize the risk but in general it is case by case. The other
problem which is due to asphaltene deposition is much related to destabilizing the asphaltenes
by stripping the resin molecules by the gas lift which result in flocculation of asphaltenes and
start to deposit. This doesnot mean that it will deposit anyway because it also depends greatly
on saturates , aromatics & Resins ratio. But it should be considered with suitable Lab test or EOS
modelling to define properly the asphaltene formation envelop to consider mitigations during
well construction.

Typically avoiding organic deposits is done considering suitable operating envelope when
possible keeping the pressure and temperature traverse in the well in the safe region, however
if this is not possible paraffin dispersants or asphaltene inhibitors are injected either with
downhole capillary or with gas lift depending on type of chemicals and required gas flow to keep
the chemical dispersed and also compatibility with other production chemicals used in the field.
Foam Formation:
Another Aspect of asphaltenes in the heavy crude is that it allows formation of stable foam. This
is quite advantage for downhole conditions since foam formation with gas lift is quite favorable
since foam density is quite low and result in higher drawdown and more production for the
wells however foam is not beneficial for surface facilities as will be discussed later.

3. Flow Assurance
In this context flow assurance considers the ability to
transport the flow from wellhead to production
facilities & to the tanks. Figure 5 shows the three main
issues with heavy crude & Gas Lift.

Pipeline pressure losses

The main difference for flow assurance aspect
between gas lift and other types of artificial lift is
existence of gas. Producing a field with gas lift means a
considerable amount of gas is pumped with stream.
The volume of gas at surface production pressures is quite large enough cause a high mixture
velocity and hence higher pressure drops. This means that producing the same amount of
production with gas lift requires larger diameter Figure 5 Flow Assurance Aspects of Gas Lift
pipeline compared with producing same amount with
other types of artificial lift. This is always subject to project economics which will define at the
end which type of artificial lift is more preferable.

Pipeline production chemistry:

Pipeline faces more challenges in terms of production chemistry due to lower temperature and
higher risk of paraffin & asphaltene deposition. Also the large volumes of gas may be enough to
stabilize emulsions and creates even higher pressure losses. Moreover foam formation when
comes to surface facilities results in many problems regarding level controls in the separators ,
liquid carryover or gas carry under and may result in shut down for production In worst
condition. These challenges in most of cases can be mitigated if they were considered earlier in
planning of the field with suitable chemical solutions.

Reservoir Considerations:
Although the objective of production technologist is to maximize the production rate using the
best artificial lift for that, Reservoir considerations may put a limit to maximum allowable
production rate and may be in favor of certain completion design to respect the field
development plan.
Water Coning
Many of the heavy oil reservoirs are shallow in depth
which may cause less compaction to the reservoir rock ,
less cementation and the result in many cases is high
quality reservoir rock. For example the gulf of suez case
has permeability ranges from 300 md to several darcies.
Having high permeability and same time high viscosity
crude makes the field very prone to water coning issues.
Figure 6 shows Multi heavy oil reservoir well where
bottom sand is quite close to water contact and reservoir
rock is high quality in this occasion the mobility of
reservoir aquifer water is 6 times higher than mobility of
oil which resulted in coning.

The common way to live with coning is to keep stand off

and control drawdown, one of the ways to control
drawdown is to use gas lift compared to pumping which
typically designed to maximize the production rate

Reservoir Description
Reservoir Development plan plays important role in Figure 6 Example from Gulf of Suez of Heavy Oil
estimation of volume of Rig / Rig-less intervention reservoir with Coning Issues
required to develop the field in the future which would have implications on selection of
artificial lift. having Multi Layers in the reservoir or Multi Reservoir in single well or bottom up
water encroachment require high flexibility in handling different range of production rates
which is one of the key advantages of gas lift. Despite the fact that some other artificial lift for
example ESP can have Y tool to access the well but in order to have smooth operations it should
be installed in larger casing size which in many cases is quite shallow. Having full ID of gas lift
completion gives advantage to different types of interventions throughout well life without
need for the rig, which is important for offshore applications.
When to use gas lift for Heavy Oil Application?
The applicability of gas lift to certain situation of heavy oil production is determined based on
economics and commercial evaluation of different artificial lift techniques, the economics in this
situation should respect the operational aspects, Implications of heavy oil on gas lift technology
& Reservoir Engineering Aspects. The following table summarizes some guidelines for gas lift
requirements in heavy oil.
Gas Lift Design Considerations to Heavy oil
Two specific considerations are taken into account while planning for Gas lift for heavy crude;
first of all, gas lift design follows the same standard steps for unloading mandrel spacing and
valve size selection, however it is important to note that gas lift design is very sensitive to flow
correlations. In fact most of the empirical correlations are based on lighter crudes which
doesnot simulate exactly the performance of heavy oil , the effect of viscosity on flow regimes ,
the onset of emulsion flow regime … etc. in this regard it is recommended to use mechanistic
flow models which have internal viscosity correction considering emulsions or to have your own
selection of flow correlation based on matching historical data from the field.

The second important aspect of gas lift design is to consider the production chemistry issues in
many cases demulsifiers are injected with lift gas which requires larger amount of gas to keep
the droplets suspended with the flow and avoid drop out of chemicals into the annulus this
requires gas lift valve size that allows required volume of gas to pass. in some situations the
production chemistry issues starts below the point of lift gas entry and this requires either to
install downhole chemical injection with capillary or to live with it and periodically soak organic
solvents in the well, selection of either way will be depending on severity of the problem in
terms of amount of deposits and frequency of deposits.

Troubleshooting of Gas lift in Heavy Oil

Typically, gas lift equipment is the same for any well and hence
should follow the same recommended practices for
troubleshooting; Moreover heavy oil applications have two
problems that are more common.

Instability Due to emulsions

Emulsion formation results in dramatic increase of mixture
viscosity and hence much higher pressure losses inside tubing
string Figure 7 shows the normal pressure traverse in green and
how this traverse change to the orange curve due to onset of emulsion. The increase in pressure
drop causes less pressure differential across the gas lift valve. The performance curve for
standard gas lift valve shown in Figure 8 shows that the change in pressure differential across
the valve results in great change of amount of gas passing through. This will change the
hydrostatic head and hence cause the well to cycle in unstable conditions.

Typically emulsions result in higher bottomhole flowing pressures and in turn lower production
rates. This problem is always detected by surface samples showing tight emulsions. Surging well
head pressure , surging casing pressure and more common with square edge gas lift valves
which requires high pressure differential to reach the critical
flow.

The best way to overcome this problem is to have solid

screening criterea for qualifying suitable demulsifiers and also
real time monitoring for wellhead parameters allows early
detection of the problem and much less downtime.

Mandrel Plugging Figure 8 performance curve for square edge gas

lift valve
A common place for organic deposits is at the entry point of lift
gas where most of the cooling and gas stripping takes place this results in plugging of the gas lift
mandrel with time , this is typically observed with increasing casing pressure and instability due
to reopening of shallower valves when exceeding the surface opening pressure for them.
typically trials to prevent this situation by downhole chemical injection of paraffin dispersant or
asphaltene inhibitors depending on the case also a common troubleshooting is to pull the valve
and open the gas lift to clean the mandrel for enough time or you may need to combine the
chemical cleaning using organic solvents with mechanical cleaning through injecting larger
amount of gas lift.

Lessons Learnt from Gulf of Suez

Gulf of Suez have a number of fields which are characterized as heavy oil. In this occasion we
will be talking about a field which is operated with gas lift , the reservoir fluid is characterized as
follows 17 – 19.5 API , Viscosity at reservoir temperature is 6 Cp & Viscosity at 100 F is 111 CP.
The crude has pour point of 37.5 F, paraffin content of 8.83% & 1.5 % of asphaltenes. The field is
offshore gulf of Suez and has multi reservoir per well. Despite the low GOR of the crude, the gas
lift system was already installed in the area for other reservoirs. The source of gas was taken
from higher GOR fields and local gas grid, the field started production in 1986 using gas lift and
the peak production was 19000 BFPD.

Across the long history of operating this field we had captured some lessons learnt.

 Heavy Oil Reservoirs have very high emulsion stability and once formed a dramatic
reduction in production rate takes place. In order to keep an eye on this problems we
took the following measures.
o Real Time monitoring : having real time data transmission of wellhead
parameters from offshore field to the base allows the early detection of the
problem and early mitigation, having the wells offshore by no means it is
 possible to detect the problem without sending people there , this cannot be
done every day. Unless we have real time monitoring.
o Optimization of demulsifier dosage through standard emulsion bottle test.
 Using Venturi Gas Lift valves are very beneficial in general and in specific for heavy oil ,
this allows less sensitivity of gas flow through the valve to the tubing pressure which
provide wider range of stable operating conditions , the low pressure differential
requirements to achieve the critical flow allows easy passage of the gas and hence give
chance to deeper point of injection and maximizing the production rate