Ge Yuan, Emmanuel Zoubovsky, Keith McKenzie, and Greg Stephenson
Occidental Petroleum
Gas lift is the primary artificial lift system utilized across approximately 2,000 wells in Oxy’s Delaware Basin assets. As the number of wells increase and personnel resources remain constrained, production engineers frequently focus on resolving urgent operational issues, such as well or equipment failures. This situation results in limited time for consistent and proactive surveillance and analysis of well performance. Advanced analytics offers a solution by enabling the evaluation of gas lift well performance and the rapid identification of wells with a high likelihood of operational issues. Traditionally, this analysis was performed manually, an inefficient and time-consuming process. The predictive gas lift surveillance tool was developed to streamline this workflow by providing a single-page interface that highlights problematic wells, allowing production engineers to efficiently manage multiple wells simultaneously.
The tool was designed to support an "Operate-by-Priority" and "Report-by-Exception" framework, enhancing operational efficiency and effectiveness. A hybrid approach, combining physics-based simulation with data-driven methods, is employed to achieve the following objectives:
• Streamline the surveillance process.
• Develop predictive surveillance capabilities.
• Promote operational efficiency.
• Identify data quality issues.
Methodology:
The tool employs an in-house, proprietary physics-based algorithm to analyze gas lift performance, determining gas lift injection status (e.g., multipointing, single-point injection). It also applies time series analysis to high-frequency sensor data from wells to detect operational anomalies. By combining these approaches, the tool classifies wells into multiple production scenarios.
Results:
The tool has greatly enhanced production engineers’ efficiency by reducing the need for manual well analysis and providing a prioritized list of wells requiring attention. For example, identification time for major issues, such as tubing leaks, has been reduced from weeks or months to just a few days.
Additionally, automated workflows have been developed to calculate potential oil production uplift based on remedial actions. The tool not only recommends corrective actions but also forecasts the potential production gains, aiding production engineers in decision-making.
The tool is estimated to reduce engineers' time for gaslift well analysis by 70%. Additionally, it accelerates production by enabling engineers to identify and resolve well issues more quickly. This comprehensive solution, which combines issue detection with uplift calculations on such a large scale, represents a significant advancement in the field.