What is plunger lift system?
A plunger lift is an artificial lift method of deliquifying a natural gas well. A plunger is used to remove contaminants from productive natural gas wells, such as water (in liquid, mist, or ice forms), sand, oil and wax. Modern wellhead controllers offer a variety of criteria to control the plunger.
What is a plunger lift in the oilfield?
1. n. [Well Completions] An artificial-lift method principally used in gas wells to unload relatively small volumes of liquid. An automated system mounted on the wellhead controls the well on an intermittent flow regime. When the well is shut-in, a plunger is dropped down the production string.
What is a plunger lift used for?
Plunger lift commonly is used to remove liquids from gas wells or produce relatively low volume, high GOR oil wells.
Why is plunger lift considered one of the simplest form of artificial lifts?
Artificial Lift for Addressing Liquid Loading Production engineers consider plunger lift to be one of the simplest forms of artificial lift because it uses the well’s own energy to remove accumulated liquids and sustain gas production.
What is Rod lift?
Rod lift is both the most versatile and prevalent form of artificial lift used to produce oil from a well. Multiple surface and downhole components make up the rod lift system, including the beam unit, sucker rod string, couplings and the downhole pump.
How does gas lift work?
Gas lift is a method of artificial lift that uses an external source of high-pressure gas for supplementing formation gas to lift the well fluids. The principle of gas lift is that gas injected into the tubing reduces the density of the fluids in the tubing, and the bubbles have a “scrubbing” action on the liquids.
Why we use artificial lift methods?
Artificial lift is a method used to lower the producing bottomhole pressure (BHP) on the formation to obtain a higher production rate from the well. Artificial lift can be used to generate flow from a well in which no flow is occurring or used to increase the flow from a well to produce at a higher rate.
What is artificial lift oil and gas?
Artificial lift is a method used to lower the producing bottomhole pressure (BHP) on the formation to obtain a higher production rate from the well. This can be done with a positive-displacement downhole pump, such as a beam pump or a progressive cavity pump (PCP), to lower the flowing pressure at the pump intake.
How does a plunger lift work?
A plunger lift uses gas pressure buildup in a well to lift a column of accumulated fluid out of the well. The plunger lift system helps to maintain gas production and may reduce the need for other remedial operations.
How does Rod lift work?
The sucker rod pump lifts the oil from the reservoir through the well to the surface. The surface pump sends the power oil through the tubing string to the subsurface hydraulic pump installed at the bottom of the tubing string, the reservoir fluids are then sent up a second parallel tubing string to the surface.
When should you use a gas lift?
Gas lift is particularly applicable for lifting fluids in wells that have a significant amount of gas produced with the crude. Gas compressors are nearly always installed to gather the produced gas and, with only minor changes, can be designed to supply the high injection-gas pressure for the gas lift system.
How is a plunger lift system is evaluated?
Plunger lift systems can be evaluated using rules of thumb in conjunction with historic well production, or with a mathematical plunger model. Because plunger lift systems typically are inexpensive and easy to install and test, most are evaluated by rules of thumb.
What happens when you unload a plunger lift well?
Initial production rates usually are high enough to produce the well above critical rates (unloaded) and establish a decline curve. When liquid loading occurs, a marked decrease and deviation from normal decline can be seen. Unloading the well with plunger lift can re-establish a normal decline.
When did they start using plunger lift in oil wells?
Foss and Gaul derived a force-balance equation for use on oil wells in the Ventura Avenue field in 1965. Lea presented a dynamic analysis of plunger lift that added gas slippage and reservoir inflow, and mathematically described the entire cycle (not just plunger ascent) for tight-gas/very high-GLR wells.
How is plunger lift used in a decline curve?
Ideally, decline curves would be used with critical-velocity curves to predetermine when plunger lift should be installed. This would enable plunger lift to maintain production on a steady decline and to never allow the well to begin loading. Fig. 1—Effects of plunger lift on a typical gas-well production decline.