Development of an intelligent economic model to optimize the initiation time of gas lift operation

Gas lift technology increases oil production rate by injection of compressed gas into the lower section of tubing through the casing–tubing annulus and an orifice installed on the tubing string. To achieve optimum recovery, operation must begin at the optimum time, in addition to inject optimum gas rate. In this work, we develop a new approach to consider the time factor in the gas lift optimization process. A piecewise cubic Hermite function is used to model the gas lift performance. The optimization procedure for gas allocation to several wells is achieved using the Genetic algorithm approach. The developed model was used to study the effect of gas lift initiation time on the reservoir life and net present value. Our calculations showed that the initiation time has a noticeable influence on the optimization procedure and should be considered a major factor for gas allocation problems in real fields. © 2014, The Author(s).