Gas Lift Application for Oil Wells with Heavy Crude, Thirty Years of Operation Offshore Gulf of Suez

Abstract

This paper presents the implications of Gas lift over the heavy oil fields, since 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 major challenge for application of Gas lift in heavy oil application is the typical low GOR encountered in Heavy oil fluid properties. The low GOR may not be suitable for gas supply to compressors, which requires gas availability to avoid tripping due to low suction or overheating during startup operations. However, in many cases nearby gas wells has been used as gas supply to compression equipment used for gas lift.