According to many industry experts Gas Lift (GL) is the least understood artificial lift method, but the reason behind that is not its complexity. While when you do things wrong on other artificial lift methods (e.g. ESP) your well will stop producing, a Gas Lift well will often keep on producing even with a bad design. Hence many operators often do not realize that their Gas Lift well is not producing at its full potential and don’t pay attention to it. There is therefore a very significant potential for production increase by understanding the principles of Gas Lift and this is a huge opportunity for any engineer willing to master this activation method.
This class is the third of the series of courses related to gas lift activation. It follows the courses “Forms of Gas Lift” and “Gas Lift equipment”. It details the Gas Lift Unloading Sequence (evolution of tubing and casing pressure profile, CHP, WHP and valves status during the Gas Lift well start up) with IPO and PPO valves.
Students will be guided to make the SPM design of a well (selection of side pocket mandrels depth) so that they can understand the principles behind that choice and how to select their parameters properly (e.g. kick off pressure). The last part of the training explains how to make such a SPM design using the software Prosper. Students will be guided within the “GL design new” form in Prosper (meaning of each parameter to be filled and recommendation on best option to be selected).
Course Curriculum:
This course is designed for:
Pre-requisites:
Course Objectives:
Participants will acquire a deep understanding on how the Gas Lift unloading sequence works. They will be able to connect all well parameters during that production phase. This is a key knowledge to be able to troubleshoot any Gas Lift well. They will be explained the concept of a side pocket mandrel design through an exercise and will be coached so that they can perform such a design themselves using a software to assist them (Prosper).
Bonus Material:
With 10 years of professional experience in the industry, Damien is recognized subject matter expert in Well Performance topics, especially Gas Lift.
Damien holds a master degree from the top ranked French Engineering School “Ecole des Ponts ParisTech”.
He started his career working on Lean Management. From there he developed a culture of Optimization and Continuous Improvement. He then worked in Business and Management Consulting, which gave him a good culture of Performance. He capitalized on those experiences to improve Production while working in the Oil and Gas industry. He went through field position where he learned to optimize well production with a “hands-on” approach. Then he was selected to provide support by working as the Head of Well Performance for his company. There he showed fast progress and achieved significant production increase, not only on gas lifted wells, but also when working on Matrix Stimulation, ESP or other Activation Methods, Surface Debottlenecking, Well Intervention etc.
He is a Gas Lift instructor in his company where he was the first to provide an in-house training that received most positive feedback from its participants.
Damien is known for sharing the information and the knowledge with the people working with him. He gives himself
the target of helping his colleagues to improve their analytic level as
well as their general knowledge of the industry.
