2 replies to this topic

[vinod]

Team

Could you explain me what is the difference between gas lift and gas injection?

Regards

Vinod

[ankur2061]

Vinod,

"Gas lift" is the "process" by which oil and / or water are artificailly lifted from wells when reservoir pressure is low.

"Gas injection" is the "method" for the gas lift process.

When you inject gas into the reservoir through the annulus of the well bore it aerates the fluid thereby reducing its density and thus allow the oil and / or water to be drawn out at the existing reservoir pressures.

Gas injection is one of the methods utilized in the process defined in the reservoir engineering terminology as "Enhanced-Oil-Recovery" (EOR) techniques.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Ankur.

[Eprocess]

Gas lift helps to produce oil when the reservoir pressure is low. By injecting gas to a producing well, we decrease the density of the oil (two phase flow), thus the hydrostatic head loss would be decreased and we can manage to lift the oil to the well head. This happens using gas lift valves, which their location are determined considering the operating conditions of the well.

Gas injection, is used for pressure maintenance of the reservoir, because as the reservoir is being depleted its pressure falls dramatically. For this purpose several injection wells might be drilled in the filed, and are just used for gas injection, the injected gas is usually the associate gas , which is injected to the reservoir after being compressed to a pressure higher that the reservoir pressure. So you see there is no oil production from injection wells, and it just contributes to the other wells.

Edited by Eprocess, 29 October 2011 - 05:55 AM.