Artificial Lift’s New Adaptive Era

Novel lift systems, AI-driven automation, and real-time engineering models are helping operators extract more value from mature wells.

In artificial lift, the new name of the game may be adaptability. From hardware to automation, the goal is to match lift performance to changing well conditions for more productivity from maturing assets.

Operators are turning to different technologies to meet the challenges posed in these aging wells, and they highlighted some of those solutions during SPE’s Artificial Lift Conference and Exhibition in Houston in August.

While mature horizontal wells typically hold remaining recoverable oil and gas, dropping reservoir pressure and liquid accumulation make producing those hydrocarbons increasingly difficult, especially from laterals with geometric low points. Current commonly used artificial lift methods haven’t been suitable for addressing waning production from these late-life laterals, Ryan Hieronymus, artificial lift lead at Occidental, said while presenting SPE 232971.

“Thousands of horizontal wells across US onshore are starting to exhibit liquid loading below the depth that we typically reach with conventional artificial lift methods,” he said.

He cited a 2012 Utica study of more than 1,000 wells that indicated more than 80% had at least one low point, or sump area, in the lateral where water can choke production from the wellbore.

“If you have a very tortuous wellbore with low points and choke points and sumps, that can have a big impact on your production, especially your late life production,” he said.

The operator ran a field trial on a well in Larimer County, Colorado, using a mechanically simple intermittent gas lift solution called Gas-Assisted Liquid Lift Using Oscillating Pressure (GALLOP), which was conceived and patented by Scott Wilson and developed in partnership with Well Master Corporation. GALLOP uses two flow strings, a check valve, and intermittent lift gas injection to produce low to moderate liquid volumes from a selected depth within the lateral, which can be anywhere along the horizontal section. According to the authors, once installed, the system is similar in complexity to intermittent single-point gas lift.

In June 2022, Oxy installed GALLOP for the first time in a pilot well producing from the Codell formation in the Denver Julesburg Basin that had experienced severe loading below the production tubing for the previous 2 years. It started production in July 2022, and in the 4 years the system has been online, the well has “produced consistently at the capacity of the reservoir, even weathering and recovering from offset frac communication,” the authors wrote.