COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF ARTIFICIAL LIFT METHODS ON A NIGER DELTA FIELD

During the reservoir production life reservoir pressure will decline. Also after water breakthrough the fluid column weight will increase as hydrostatic pressure will increase because of increased water and oil mixture density. In this case, reservoir pressure may not be enough to lift up the fluid from bottom to the surface. These reasons decrease or even may cause to stop flowing of fluids from the well. Some techniques must be applied to prevent the production decline. Artificial lift system technologies are used to augment fluid production from the reservoir. These fall into several categories depending on the operating principle, design and energy source. Artificial lift techniques are applied to add energy to the produced fluids. Artificial lift as a system of adding energy to the fluid column in a wellbore to initiate and enhance production from the well is necessary when reservoir drives do not sustain acceptable rates or cause fluids to flow at all in some cases; which use a range of operating principles, including pumping and gas lifting. The reliability of the production forecast is dependent on the reservoir pressure, and mostly the water cut. A small change in water cut gives a large change in oil production. This study uses a simulation based model of the PIPESIM artificial lift method based on operating limits of each artificial lift technique to present suitable artificial lift type regarding application conditions for a hypothetical well on a Niger Delta field. The results from the developed simulation based model shows that the ESP solution gives a superior production rate compared to gas lift and the “base case”.