Flowing Bottomhole Pressure during Gas Lift in Unconventional Oil Wells

We present artificial neural network (ANN) models for predicting the flowing bottomhole pressure (FBHP) of unconventional oil wells under gas lift operations. Well parameters, fluid properties, production/injection data, and bottomhole gauge pressures from 16 shale oil wells in Permian Basin, Texas, USA, are analyzed to determine key parameters affecting FBHP during the gas lift operation. For the reservoir fluid properties, several pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) models, such as Benedict-Webb-Rubin (BWR); Lee, Gonzalez, and Eakin; and Standing, among others, are examined against experimentally tuned fluid properties (i.e., viscosity, formation volume factor, and solution gas-oil ratio) to identify representative fluid (PVT) models for oil and gas properties. Pipe flow models (i.e., Hagedorn and Brown; Gray, Begs and Brill; and Petalas and Aziz) are also examined by comparing calculated FBHP against the bottomhole gauge pressures to identify a representative pipe flow model. Training and test data sets are then generated using the representative PVT and pipe flow models to develop a physics-based ANN model. The physics-based ANN model inputs are hydrocarbon fluid properties, liquid flow rate (qL), gas-liquid ratio (GLR), water-oil ratio (WOR), well true vertical depth (TVD), wellhead pressure (Pwh), wellhead temperature (Twh), and temperature gradient (dT/dh). A data-based ANN model is also developed based on only TVD, Pwh, qL, GLR, and WOR. Both physics- and data-based ANN models are trained through hyperparameter optimization using genetic algorithm and K-fold validation and then tested against the gauge FBHP. The results reveal that both models perform well with the FBHP prediction from field data with a normalized mean absolute error (NMAE) of around 10%. However, a comparison between results from the physics- and data-based ANN models shows that the accuracy of the physics-based model is higher at the later phase of the gas lift operation when the steady-state pipe flow is well established. On the contrary, the data-based model performs better for the early phase of gas lift operation when transient flow behavior is dominant. Developed ANN models and workflows can be applied to optimize gas lift operations under different fluid and well conditions.