System Analysis and Application of Combined System of ESP and Gas Lift

Abstract With the development of deep-buried reservoirs and offshore fields, many prominent problems have been encountered by the use of conventional single artificial lift technologies, which can not meet the requirements of production and may cause frequent workovers. The combination of electrical submersible pump (ESP) and gas lift system (GL), taking advantages of flexible pump rate, relative long workover intervals and simple composition of tubing strings, is considered to be a better solution. The design of ESP-GL combined system is more complicated, referring to the distribution of pressure, temperature and viscosity fields of multiphase flow in the tubing string. In this article, based on the performance curves of lift devices and oil well, the design approach of the ESP-GL combined system based on nodal analysis is established with an example calculation. An optimization design approach of the combined system is then developed by intelligent algorithms, considering some key operating parameters, e.g. pump drainage rate, ESP depth, ESP stages, valve depth and gas injection rate, to find the optimal operating condition of the system. At the same time, the combined lifting system has been successfully applied in some pilot tests in China and Vietnam reporting to have production increments, which suggests a good potential for the application of the ESP-GL combined system in deep fields.