SPE 130912

Comparisons of Various Algorithms for Gas-lift Optimization in a Coupled

Surface Network and Reservoir Simulation
Pierre Samier, SPE, Total SA

Copyright 2010, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE EUROPEC/EAGE Annual Conference and Exhibition held in Barcelona, Spain, 14–17 June 2010.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Gas lift is used for gas-liquid two phase producers to boost the production. Increasing gas liquid ratio GLR reduces the average
fluid mixture density in the well connections and therefore reduces the hydrostatic pressure drop and hence reducing the
bottomhole pressure resulting in a higher production rate or a longer individual well production period. This technique is also
used for deep offshore fields injecting the gas at the toe of the FPSO risers located at the seafloor.
But as the lift gas supply is increased further, friction pressure losses in the tubing or the riser become more important and the
production rate peaks then starts to decrease. Also high gas flowrates may induce corrosion problems, and the total amount of
available gas-lift is limited. Therefore an optimal gas-lift rate exists for a maximum production rate or more generally a
maximum production profit.
Various gas lift optimization algorithms have been proposed in literature for optimizing gas-lift to individual wells or within a
group of wells, very few are suitable for long-term reservoir development studies with gas-lift injection within a network
(FPSO riser toe for example).
Commercial simulators such as Eclipse, VIP, Nexus, … provide internal optimization tool which are convenient for gas-lift at
wells connections. Optimizing gas-lift within a network with additional gas rate inside flowlines or risers becomes much more
complicated since the THP limits of all the other wells in the network are affected. Each time a lift gas increment is added or
substracted, the whole network must be rebalanced with the appropriate lift gas rate in order to recomputed the change in the
field oil production rate. The paper reviews some of the optimization methods available in commercial coupled surface
network and reservoir simulators such as Resolve -Gap-Eclipse, Nexus, Avocet, …
Several optimization algorithms linked to a surface facility model coupled to an open reservoir simulator prototype have been
also applied (Ensemble based method, Steepest-Descent, Gauss-Newton, BFGS, ..) and compared to previous commercial
software solutions.
Results of the comparisons are presented on a surface network model coupled to a reservoir simulator where the objective is to
optimize the gas-lift allocations at riser toes.
One of the test cases based on a modified SPE 9 comparative test is fully documented and allows the readers to compare
results with their own optimization algorithm.

Introduction

Problem statement
The optimization problem is to maximize daily hydrocarbon production by optimally selecting lift-gas rates subject to the
pressure and rate constraints of surface facilities. The problem has been addressed by several authors in the oil industry. Fang
and Lo1 proposed a linear programming technique to allocate lift-gas rates. Hepguler et al.2 uses a sequential programming
(SQP) optimization algorithm. Wang et al.3 continued on the Fang and Lo’s work. The optimization step is invoked at the
Newton iteration level of a reservoir simulator and becomes a part of the balancing algorithm between the reservoir and the
network which interacts with the convergence of the network system. Davidson and Beckner4 worked also on the SQP
technique. Kosmidis et al5 developed a nonlinear optimization formulation based on sequential linear-programming (SLP)
2 SPE 130912

method. Ray and Sarker6 applied a multiobjective evolutionary method. Wang and Litvak7 improve the previous Wang method
and presented a detailed summary and comparisons of all the previous methods. Some of these methods and variants have
been implemented in several commercial reservoir simulators.
Several commercial reservoir simulators offer the capability to solve this optimization problem.
Of course, we could not try all the possible software solutions available in the reservoir simulation community. Among them,
three well known and widely used reservoir simulator software solution were tried.

EclipseTM simulator (SIS) :

The reservoir simulator EclipseTM offers a well gas-lift optimization feature. The gas needs to be injected inside the well
tubings. The pressure loss in the well tubing of an oil producer well can be modeled according to an hydraulic table
relationship such as Eq. 1:
BHPw = f (THP , Q,Wcut , Gor , Alq ) (1)
where Q is the liquid rate of producer well,
THP is well head pressure,
BHP is the bottomhole-pressure,
Gor is the gas oil ratio,
Wcut is the water-cut,
Alq is the injected gas-lift rate (units Mscf/day or Msm3/day)
The optimizer searchs the Alq quantities that maximize the oil production of each individual wells.
This procedure works well when the reservoir pressure constraints are given only at wells (minimum bottomhole pressure or
minimum tubing head pressure for producers).
If surface facilities need to be included in the reservoir model, the solution when using Eclipse is to model each individual
pipeline as an hydraulics table relating the inlet and and outlet pressure according to Eq. 2:
Poutlet = f ( Pinlet , Q, Wcut , Gor , Alq ) (2)

VFP#2
riser VFP#2
ALQ riser
variable ALQ
GL injection variable

VFP#1 pipeline
VFP#1 pipeline with dummy ALQ
Manifold
Manifold
VFP#3
tubing with
VFP#3 dummy ALQ
tubing variable

GL injection

Figure 1 - Installation scheme Figure 2 - Eclipse gas-lift optimizer representation

Fig. 1 depicts the Eclipse model of a simple branch of a network with gas-lift injected at the toe of a riser at the end of the
branch. In order to optimize the gas-lift quantities at the riser toe, a solution is to introduce a dummy dependancy of the well
tubing pressure loss to Alq quantities by adding to the hydraulic tables two ALQ points and by duplicating the BHP entries
and to transform the model of Fig 1 into the model of Fig. 2.
A specific option in Eclipse (NODEPROP keyword - add lift gas option) allows to add the gas lift from the corresponding
group subordinate wells to the produced gas entering the network. The optimizer will optimize the gas lift allocations at each
well. These individual quantities have no effect on the well pressure losses in the tubing since the BHP values (from Equ. 1)
are the same for any ALQ value but the specific Eclipse option sums the ALQ quantities at the connecting branch. These
added amounts lock the ALQ value of the riser flow table and become the optimized gas lift values for each riser.

The Eclipse gas lift optimization facility is based on the data of a minimum economic gradient of improvement in oil
production per unit increase in lift gas injection rate. Compression costs can be expressed as a cost per unit rate of lift gas
injection ($/day per Mscf/day). This cost is balanced against the value of extra amount of oil produced. The ratio of the
additionnal cost per Mscf/day divided by the additional revenue per stb/day is the minimum economic gradient. The optimizer
will allocate a gas-lift increment at a given well if the additional oil produced at this well divided by the gas-lift increment is
SPE 130912 3

higher than the economic gradient expressed in bbl/Mscf . The method is based on a gas lift performance curve (oil rate vs.
lift-gas rate curve) and seems to be derived from the Fang and Lo or Wang approach.
Schlumberger is now offering a new gas lift optimization module with new technology (Newton Reduction method and
Genetic algorithm) in the Avocet Gas Lift Optimization module. Our test uses the standard implicit and standalone Eclipse
network option and not yet the new explicit coupling Avocet module linking a reservoir simulator and a surface network

NexusTM reservoir simulator (Landmark)

The reservoir simulator NexusTM offers a complete gas lift optimization feature allowing to optimize the gas-lift inside
the network. The network can be discretized as a series of hydraulic tables but also as flowlines using standard flow
correlations.
The lift gas rate can be specified by a constraint at the lift gas connection. Two options are available:
1) a nonlinear optimizer,
2) an optimal lift gas table: the user provides the simulator with a table of gas-liquid or gas-oil ratio as a function of
water cut, liquid, or oil rate. A table look up, based on the well’s inflow performance characteristics, is performed to
obtain the well’s gas-liquid or gas-oil ratio. This ratio then is used in the table look up for the flowing bottom-hole
pressure.

GAPTM optimizer (Petroleum Expert)

The interactive software GAPTM proposes a methodology for constructing, running and optimizing a surface network.
Wells are the source points of the GAP network. Well inflow performance can be defined by a lookup table which relates the
phase rates to the bottomhole-pressure
Qϕ = Fϕ (BHP ) for ϕ=w,o,g (3)

These tables are fed at a constant time user-defined interval using an external reservoir simulator. The coupling to an external
reservoir simulator is managed by the communication interface ResolveTM based on the communication protocol MPI for a
linux OS reservoir simulator or the Windows API Openserver. All the network components (well tubings, flowlines, risers,
chokes, pumps, ...) are modeled inside GAP using either hydraulic tables or steady state flow correlations. The network and
well management constraints are given inside the GAP interface.
At each time when GAP and the reservoir simulator encounter, the reservoir simulator communicates to GAP two or more
points of the IPR lookup table for each well. GAP solves the network pressures and rates and optimizes the unknown
parameters (well pressures drops and gas lift quantities in this case). The reservoir simulator proceeds to the next meeting time
while solving the reservoir equations with its own timestepping procedure and with the well rates values prescribed by GAP.
The coupling is explicit and it is assumed that the constant user-defined time interval is such that the differences between the
well bottomhole pressures computed by the reservoir similator and those prescribed by GAP remain small.
For the lift gas optimization problem, this explicit coupled solution is evaluated using either RevealTM (Petroleum Expert)
or ECLIPSE TM (SIS). In this coupled software solution, the well controls needed inside the reservoir simulator are very simple
(fixed bottomhole pressure or fixed liquid rate for oil producers), all the network and optimizer features used in the previous
“Eclipse simulator “paragraph are removed. The production well group management features are also removed. The injecting
well group management (voidage replacement, pressure maintenance, group controls, …) can remain inside the reservoir
simulator. For complex cases where several reservoir model share the same network, the water and/or gas injection networks
need to be included inside the GAP surface network since the global field quantities are only known by GAP or Resolve. For
example, if reservoir model A reinjects the sum of the gas produced by reservoirs models A and B, the link provided by the
Resolve solution does not allow reservoir A to know what is the total gas produced.
The gas lift quantities are optimized by GAP. The optimization is performed at each timestep independently of the
previous timestep. No indication is given on the numerical technique used by the optimizer.

Global Optimization package

For this option, we use an optimization package offering several optimization algorithms: Powell, Levenberg-Marquardt,
Gauss-Newton, Steepest-Descent, BFGS,8,9. The lift gas rates are defined as a time varying table where each value is a
parameter. If the network contains p gas lift injectors, we can define at k specific time periods N parameters for the value of
the gas lift. The total number of parameters is equal to k times p and the allocated gas lift quantities are constant during each
time period.
The optimizer will choose the k*p parameters values in order to maximize an objective function such as the total oil
production or the total revenue such as:
R = Oil production * oil value + gas produced *gas value – allocated lift gas* liftcost – water production *water cost (4)

Using Eclipse as a reservoir simulator, the dataset containing the parametric values could contain the following commands
indicated in Fig 3.
4 SPE 130912

BRANPROP BRANPROP
GL1 FPSO 2 $PARAM_1 / GL1 FPSO 2 $PARAM_PP1 /
…….. ……..
GLN FPSO 3 $PARAM_P / GLN FPSO 3 $PARAM_2P /
DATE DATE
1 JAN 2012 / 1 JUN 2012 /

Figure 3 – Gas lift parameters using Eclipse keywords format

GL1 is the inlet node of the riser, FPSO is the outlet node, 2 is an hydraulic table number and $PARAM_N is the parameter
value of the allocated lift gas (lock up variable of the hydraulic table). The gradient method algorithm used does not need
analytical gradients which may be difficult to obtain. Derivatives are computed numerically in fixing all parameters and
adding a delta value to each parameter. The algorithm need to run k*p additional simulations to get the derivatives with respect
to each parameter. Compared to the three previous local methods, the optimization is now global and is performed not at the
end of each time interval but at the end of the whole simulation. In the previous methods available inside reservoir simulators
(SLP, SQP, GLINC, ...), the gas lift optimization is solved in selected iterations of a reserservoir simulation timestep and can
affect the convergence of the network/reservoir equations. For this gradient method, the reservoir simulator solves much easier
reservoir/network problems with constant gas lift allocations (just look-up values on the hydraulic table associated to the
risers). The drawback is the need of an important amount of simulations (50 to 100) instead of a unique but complex reservoir
simulation as depicted in the previous sections. The advantage is the possibility to use free open reservoir simulator
prototypes.

Experimental design
The principle is to use the same global parametric approach as the gradient method. But this type of method only allows a
limited amount of parameters. For example an experimental design with 11 parameters located in the hyperspace of Fig. 4
ends up to 151 different parameter combinations and trial simulations.

Figure 4 - Experimental design with 11 parameters

Ensemble Kalman Filter
The formulation of the EnKF has been well documented in Evensen (2003)10,11, Naevdal et al (2005) and Chen et al 12
(2006). The ensemble Kalman filter methodology collects all the variables of interest into a state vector y. We refer these
variables as state technique variables. A typical state vector of a three phase flow problem is composed of porosity,
permeability, pressure, water saturation, gas saturation, Rs or Rv ratio at each gridblock and all the variables of the production
data. Chen et al 12 propose an ensemble based closed-loop optimization method that combines an optimization method (EnOpt)
and the EnKF method. Su and Oliver13 applied the technique for optimizing valves settings of smart wells. The time varying
valve setting optimization problem has some similarities with the gas lift rate optimization settings.
Vector notation is used for the component of y, because they are vectors containing either static or dynamic variables at all
the gridblocks or production data from all the wells. For the EnKF application, an ensemble of state vectors are collected in a
matrix Y
[ ]
Y = y1 , y 2 , y 3 ,..., y N (4)
A typical size for the matrix Y is (4*nbm + 4*nbm + nobs, N) where nbm is the total number of active blocks of the
reservoir model, nobs is the number of well measurements and N is the total number of the ensemble members (for example
50). The state vector has 4*nbm parameters to optimize and 4*nbm solutions variables. This matrix Y is computed at a given
sequence of updating steps (mainly a sequence of user-defined report steps for the reservoir simulator).
At time 0, N (for example 50) different initial guess of the 4*nbm petrophysical parameters are set using various
geostatistical techniques. The N reservoir simulations are run from time 0 to the first report step. At this first updating time t,
each ensemble of the Y matrix is updated using the EnKF updating equation:
SPE 130912 5

T
Yt u ≈T Yt f + K t T Yt f (5)

Ytf is the forecast matrix obtained at time t from the N reservoir simulations (the parameters, the grid blocks solutions and well
quantities predictions at time t), Ytu is the updated value of the matrix which incorporates the measurements at time t. Kt is a
square matrix of size (N, N) and can be seen as the core of the EnKF technique.The derivation of the K matrix at time t is
complex and can be found in Evensen9,10 or Chen 11. It is computed using various covariance matrices between the N
ensembles and the difference between the observed measurements and the predicted ones at time t.
The idea of the EnKF method consists in correcting the parameters but also the results of the N simulations at time t such that
the predicted values at the measurements “equate” the observed values in a statistical way using the formalism of uncertainty
analysis and accounting for the model and measurements errors.
Since, the correction is performed not only on the matching parameters but also on the predicted results at time t (water
saturation, pressure, , ..). the restart files of the N simulations containing the converged state at time t need to be modified and
the N simulations are run from time t to the next report step then updated, and so on…
The purpose of all these N short simulations from one restart step to the next one is to determine N sets of parameters that
match the observations at each report step. The simulation results obtained during the updating steps are not correct since the
updated restart states are not valid equilibrated states. Therefore, at the end of the updating process, a parameter set (the best
one) is chosen among the N available updated sets and the optimized simulation is rerun without updating in the classical way.
Similarly to the previous gradient method, the artifical lift curve is a parametric piecewise curve where the gas lift allocations
are constant during each time interval.
Appling this methodology to a gas lift optimization problem, the N state vectors yt,i need to be redefined. The static parameters
such as grid-block porosity and permeability are replaced by N.p.k Alq values through the entire prediction period where p is
the number of gas lift injectors in the network, N the number of ensembles and k the number of time periods. With this choice,
at each optimization iteration, all ensemble members carry the simulation through the entire production prediction period.
Physically, the value of the gas lift quantity at year 10 has no effect on the simulation at year 1 and does not represent the state
vector at year 1, therefore updating the whole list of Alq parameters at report step k may be unconsistent.
The choice of the solution variables to include in the state vector needs also to be examined, the variables must be available
in the reservoir simulator restart file. We include the pressure at the network nodes and the grid-block pressures in the
reservoir. The component mass flow rate or the phase volume flow rate at the nodes and at the perforated cells could be
included, the availability of these quantities in the restart file varies according to the reservoir simulator used.
The grid block values (saturation, pressure, ..) can be restricted to the values at the perforated grid blocks. Using a black
box reservoir/network simulator, the workflow is a bit complicated, restarts files needs to be read and updated at each report
steps, an automated procedure for editing and launching the simulator dataset including the restart commands, the updated
parameters values is needed. Evensen proposed an automated workflow based on Eclipse datasets, this workflow can be
adapted to the gas lift optimization. We found it easier to incorporate the Kalman Filter updating inside the source code of an
open reservoir/network simulator prototype.
Apart from the implementation procedure and some ajustments to find the more suitable components of the ensemble state
vector, this method appears to be more suitable for gas lift optimization than the gradient method since the optimization of the
Alq parameters is performed now at each report step and not only at the end of the whole simulation period.

Other methods
Other methods such as genetic algorithms, direct search methods such as the evolutionary algorithms (Yeten et al. 2003)23,
adjoint methods (Sarma et al)19,20,21 have been proposed. Due to time constraint, we did not evaluate theses techniques.

Results
The various optimization methods indicated previously have been tried on a modified SPE 9 comparative test24
This case is not a real field application but the network of the model has enough complexity to test the various methods for
optimizing the lift gas inside the network.
The advantage of a published test case is the ability for other readers to reproduce the same tests, to compare results with their
own optimization algorithm.

Application data
A network is added to the SPE9 case in which the 25 producing wells are controlled by a maximum oil rate of 1,500
bbl/day and a minimum bottomhole-pressure of 1,000 psi.
6 SPE 130912

Figure 5 - Network linked to the 25 producers of SPE 9 model

The network is indicated in Fig. 5 (from GAPTM output). Wells tubings are represented by green triangles, nodes by red dots,
pipelines and risers by blue elements, gas-lift injectors at the riser toes by red boxes.
It comprises four branches which gather at a sink point called FPSO.
Each branch contains the same flowline with following properties (length 3,282ft, diameter 9”62, roughness 1.968.10-5
inches). The 4 risers are have the same physical properties: a main tubing length 4,199ft, diameter 11”248, roughness 1.968
10-5 inches, 3 flexible sections (length 623 ft, length 65 ft, length 393ft, diameter 11”248, roughness 0.0433307 inches). A
gas-lift injector is connected at the toe of the riser. Well 1 is a water injector controlled by bottomhole pressure. Tubing head
of producer wells 2 to 6 are linked at the branch 1, wells 7 to 14 to branch 2, wells 15 to 16 ro branch 3 and wells 17 to 26 to
branch 4.
The well head and the bottom hole of each producer are linked by a tubing with following physical properties: 4,324ft length,
4”66 diameter, roughness 0.00059 inches.
The pressure losses inside the tubing of the 25 producing wells are modeled by the same hydraulic table computed by a
pressure loss calculation software ProsperTM. The hydraulic table entries comprise 10 liquid rates values (1. to 2000 bbl/d), 9
tubng head pressure values (29 to 4000 psi), 10 water-cut values, 8 Gor values. Due to printing limitations, a reduced table
(with only 3 values for each variable) is indicated in Table 1.
The flowline hydraulic table entries comprise 8 Gor entries: (0.56 to 11 Mscf/stb), 6 water-cut entries (0. 0.25 0.50 0.75
0.95 0,99), 10 liquid rate entries (from 1 to 20,000 bbl/day), 7 outlet pressure entries ranging from 29. to 2914 psi. A reduced
table (with only 3 entries for each value) is indicated in Table 2.
The riser hydraulic table entries comprise 8 Gor entries (ranging from 0.05 to 11Mscf/stb)., 5 wcut entries (0. 0.25 0.50 0.75
0.95), 10 liquid rate entries (from 1. to 20,000 bbl/day), 5 outlet pressure values (29.40 to 455.7 psi) and 4 artifical lift gas
rates : 0.0,7099,17748, 35494 Mscf/day. A reduced table (with 3 only entries for each variable) is indicated in Table 3.
The terminal node is constrained to a pressure of 400 psi, the maximum total oil rate is 20,000 bbl/day.
The SPE9 model includes a water injector with a maximum bottomhole pressure of 4,000 psi and a maximum injecting rate of
5,000 bbl/day. The injector reinjects 100% of the water coming from the producing wells.
The simulation is run during 11 years and it is assumed that the total gaslift quantity available is 120,000 Mscf/day all over the
duration of the run. Since this quantity is higher than the produced gas, it is assumed that the difference between injected gas
and the produced gas comes from another producing reservoir. Another possible scenario is to constraint the maximum gas lift
rate to the produced gas minus a constant quantity used for powering the surface installation. The oil price is 70$/bbl and the
gas-lift cost 1$ per MMsct injected. The aim is to maximize a simple objective function equals to:
Profit = total oil rate *70 – total injected lift-gas * 1
This function could include the cost of the production water or the value of the produced gas.
SPE 130912 7

VFPPROD 2 1* LIQ WCT GOR THP IGLR FIELD BHP /

1 9100. LIQ WCT GOR THP ‘ ‘ FIELD BHP / 1.0 10000.0 20000.0 / LIQ units stb/day
1.0 1000.0 2000.0 / LIQ Units stb/day 29.4 1514.7 2914.7 / Outlet pressure units Psia
28.7 1514.7 3968.7 / THP units psia 0 0.5 0.99 / WCT units stb/stb
0 0.5 0.95 / WCT unuts stb/stb 0.56 1.39 11 / GOR units Mscf/stb
0.1 1.39 10 / GOR units Mscf/stb 0/
0/ 1 1 1 1 30.0 38.9 68.0
1 1 1 1 1440.8 1092.8 1032.1 1 1 2 1 30.0 85.3 115.4
1 1 2 1 1419.5 221.0 297.1 1 1 3 1 29.9 394.9 679.0
1 1 3 1 1320.4 298.9 543.9 1 2 1 1 30.1 36.3 51.8
1 2 1 1 1808.8 1455.8 1384.2 1 2 2 1 30.1 47.4 78.0
1 2 2 1 1804.7 279.8 326.5 1 2 3 1 30.1 247.3 370.0
1 2 3 1 1775.1 200.0 353.9 1 3 1 1 30.1 31.3 34.8
1 3 1 1 1810.1 1780.2 1764.9 1 3 2 1 30.1 31.9 37.3
1 3 2 1 1809.7 1328.6 1200.8 1 3 3 1 30.1 35.8 48.4
1 3 3 1 1807.0 326.2 382.1 2 1 1 1 1515.3 1517.4 1522.9
2 1 1 1 2928.8 2924.0 2922.3 2 1 2 1 1515.3 1518.3 1526.6
2 1 2 1 2837.0 2309.5 2270.9 2 1 3 1 1515.3 1533.9 1576.7
2 1 3 1 2831.4 1906.0 1947.2 2 2 1 1 1515.4 1516.9 1521.0
2 2 1 1 3300.8 3130.3 3115.9 2 2 2 1 1515.4 1517.6 1523.9
2 2 2 1 3299.8 2825.3 2613.3 2 2 3 1 1515.4 1524.6 1546.4
2 2 3 1 3296.0 1948.9 1977.5 2 3 1 1 1515.4 1516.2 1518.3
2 3 1 1 3302.0 3281.7 3274.9 2 3 2 1 1515.4 1516.3 1518.4
2 3 2 1 3301.9 3248.4 3225.5 2 3 3 1 1515.4 1516.4 1519.1
2 3 3 1 3301.6 2995.1 2766.7 3 1 1 1 2915.3 2917.0 2920.9
3 1 1 1 5385.2 5380.2 5378.3 3 1 2 1 2915.3 2917.6 2924.0
3 1 2 1 5113.5 5070.1 5045.5 3 1 3 1 2915.3 2929.3 2962.9
3 1 3 1 5111.4 4543.0 4568.8 3 2 1 1 2915.4 2916.7 2920.0
3 2 1 1 5764.5 5589.8 5575.0 3 2 2 1 2915.4 2916.9 2921.2
3 2 2 1 5761.8 5373.6 5339.2 3 2 3 1 2915.4 2922.2 2938.9
3 2 3 1 5759.8 4705.0 4694.0 3 3 1 1 2915.4 2916.2 2918.3
3 3 1 1 5765.7 5743.9 5736.9 3 3 2 1 2915.4 2916.2 2918.3
3 3 2 1 5765.7 5725.0 5711.1 3 3 3 1 2915.4 2916.3 2918.6
3 3 3 1 5765.5 5601.0 5476.1
Table 1 – Reduced hydraulic table for all tubings Table 2 – Reduced hydraulic table for all 4 flowlines

Figure 6 - Field Oil rate and oil production without lift gas
8 SPE 130912

3 1* LIQ WCT GOR THP GRAT FIELD BHP / 2 2 1 3 352.5 700.0 825.7
1.0 10000.0 20000.0 / LIQ units stb/day 2 2 2 1 2376.3 992.8 951.7
29.4 314.7 455.7 / outlet pressure units psia 2 2 2 2 463.8 752.0 853.1
0 0.5 0.95 / WCT units stb/stb 2 2 2 3 352.5 685.4 788.1
0.05 1.39 11 / GOR units Mscf/stb 2 2 3 1 2366.1 662.2 789.5
0.00 10000.00 35000.00 / GRAT units Mscf/day 2 2 3 2 463.8 655.8 799.8
1 1 1 1 1819.1 1730.8 1701.9 2 2 3 3 352.5 629.6 830.0
1 1 1 2 38.5 406.1 559.8 2 3 1 1 2233.2 2210.3 2210.7
1 1 1 3 77.9 231.3 466.7 2 3 1 2 470.2 799.6 1149.5
1 1 2 1 1629.4 295.3 484.3 2 3 1 3 352.5 605.1 742.1
1 1 2 2 38.5 245.6 458.5 2 3 2 1 2390.0 2149.3 2130.2
1 1 2 3 77.9 228.8 455.1 2 3 2 2 470.2 770.9 1066.0
1 1 3 1 1618.6 373.4 704.9 2 3 2 3 352.5 603.2 738.6
1 1 3 2 38.5 397.0 726.1 2 3 3 1 2389.8 1182.9 1061.8
1 1 3 3 77.9 455.4 777.5 2 3 3 2 470.2 690.7 790.5
1 2 1 1 1966.4 1836.0 1890.8 2 3 3 3 352.5 593.3 721.9
1 2 1 2 38.5 385.0 539.8 3 1 1 1 2156.9 2134.3 2137.2
1 2 1 3 77.9 211.3 445.4 3 1 1 2 614.9 1091.8 1321.3
1 2 2 1 2078.8 412.8 512.4 3 1 1 3 506.2 896.5 1033.2
1 2 2 2 38.5 253.1 482.6 3 1 2 1 2269.5 995.8 1036.5
1 2 2 3 77.9 212.6 426.2 3 1 2 2 614.8 922.9 1007.3
1 2 3 1 1837.5 234.6 476.6 3 1 2 3 506.2 863.0 969.7
1 2 3 2 38.5 258.3 496.4 3 1 3 1 2267.0 841.6 1042.1
1 2 3 3 77.9 317.1 540.7 3 1 3 2 614.8 831.2 1056.0
1 3 1 1 1946.2 1922.9 2073.3 3 1 3 3 506.2 803.1 1091.1
1 3 1 2 38.5 273.5 456.4 3 2 1 1 2369.8 2251.8 2251.8
1 3 1 3 77.9 177.1 352.0 3 2 1 2 622.0 1100.4 1387.9
1 3 2 1 2105.6 1794.7 1601.7 3 2 1 3 506.2 882.1 1017.7
1 3 2 2 38.5 268.4 437.7 3 2 2 1 2516.5 1302.4 1199.6
1 3 2 3 77.9 178.5 353.0 3 2 2 2 622.0 939.3 1037.9
1 3 3 1 2079.3 338.2 436.7 3 2 2 3 506.2 858.7 963.7
1 3 3 2 38.5 173.1 405.3 3 2 3 1 2474.7 833.4 925.4
1 3 3 3 77.9 183.5 354.4 3 2 3 2 622.0 827.5 928.6
2 1 1 1 2015.7 1991.5 1989.8 3 2 3 3 506.2 817.3 956.8
2 1 1 2 456.7 857.5 1056.1 3 3 1 1 2375.1 2351.8 2352.4
2 1 1 3 352.5 713.1 847.1 3 3 1 2 628.5 1120.9 1457.0
2 1 2 1 2134.1 798.1 856.4 3 3 1 3 506.2 795.0 923.1
2 1 2 2 456.7 737.7 829.8 3 3 2 1 2468.8 2294.9 2314.3
2 1 2 3 352.5 692.8 798.8 3 3 2 2 628.5 1080.9 1373.2
2 1 3 1 2131.2 616.4 937.3 3 3 2 3 506.2 790.9 917.7
2 1 3 2 456.7 594.7 953.5 3 3 3 1 2530.2 1492.9 1360.3
2 1 3 3 352.5 579.5 970.0 3 3 3 2 628.5 895.3 1020.4
2 2 1 1 2227.9 2109.6 2107.2 3 3 3 3 506.2 777.4 898.7
2 2 1 2 463.7 841.1 1094.3
Table 3 – Reduced hydraulic table for riser - dependence on ALQ parameter

Run 1 – Balancing the network without lift-gas

The network of Fig. 5 is solved with black-oil properties of SPE 9 test case using two reservoirs simulators (EclipseTM and
NexusTM). The tubings, pipelines and risers are modeled using the complete variable lists of hydraulic Tables 1 to 3 given in
reduced form in the previous section. No lift gas is injected.
All the wells are producing with total oil rate constraint of 20,000 bbl/d, a delivery pressure of 400psi at the terminal, a
maximum oil rate of 1500 bbl/day and a minimum pressure of 1000 psi. Fig. 6 indicates the total oil production and the total oil
rate for the two simulators. The production plateau fails after 640 days for the Eclipse run and at 600 days for the Nexus run.
The predicted total oil production after 11 years is 23,524 MSTB for Nexus and 26,324 MSTB for Eclipse.
Differences come from the unstable behavior of the wells at the end of the simulation. Nexus reports zero backflow constraints
and hydraulic instability and closes more prematurely the wells while Eclipse close the wells later.
Assuming an oil revenue of $70 for the oil, the objective function for run 1 is 1,84 B$
SPE 130912 9

Run 2 – Balancing the network with maximum constant gas lift

For this case, the 4 gas-lift injectors inject a constant gas-lift value of 30,000 Mscf/d during the 11 years. Fig. 7 indicates
the total oil production and the total oil rate predicted by both reservoir simulators. Thank to lift gas, the behavior of the wells
are no more unstable at the end of the simulation. After 11 years, the predicted total oil production is 31,000 MSTB for the
Eclipse run and 30,400 MSTB for the Nexus run. The total lift gas quantities injected are 466,800 MMscf for both simulators.
It is lower than the product of the duration 4018 days times the rate 120,000 Mscf/day since branch #3 connected to two wells
has no more production after 9.5 years and no lift-gas is injected in this branch after 9.5 years
With the sample hypothesis of $70 for the oil and 1$ cost for the lift gas, the objective function for run 2 is 1,7 B$. The
economy is worse than the no lift gas scenario (run 1) since the benefit in oil production (329 M$) is lower than the additional
cost for a sustained lift gas injection of 120,000 Mscf/day (466M$).

Figure 7 - Field oil rate and field oil production increase with maximum lift gas allocation

Run 3 – Optimizing lift gas using EclipseTM optimizer

Eclipse reservoir simulator has an optimizer feature for gas-lift injected inside well tubings. In order to optimize the gas lift
quantities at the 4 riser toes of Fig. 5, a solution is to introduce a dummy dependence of the well tubing pressure loss to Alq
quantities. Hydraulic Table 1 is modified by adding two entries for Alq variables (ALQ=0 and ALQ = 30,000.), the BHP
values for value ALQ=0 are duplicated for the value ALQ=30,000. The same modification is done for the flowline in Table 2.
The gas lift quantity at the entry node of each riser node (P10, P20, P30, P40 according to Fig. 5) is the sum of all the
optimized lift-gas allocations at each subordinate well. With the oil and lift price hypotheses, the economic gradient is 1/70 =
0.0142. Fig. 8 depicts the corresponding increase in total oil production and the associated lift-gas allocation found by the
optimizer. Fig. 9 depicts the gas lift rate allocated inside each riser. The predicted total oil production after 11 years is 28,792
MSTB and the total lift-gas quantity injected at this date is 163,113 MMscf . The optimizer did not allocate lift-gas for branch
3 which has only two wells. The maximum allocation is done for branch 2 which connects to the highest number of wells.
Hence, the objective function for run 3 is equal to 1,852 B$. It should pointed out that the optimizer implementation devoted to
well lift gas optimization succeeds to solve a network allocation problem with the same algorithm and without a specific
network allocation. And the results are quite acceptable and stable as a network optimization.
10 SPE 130912

Figure 8 -- Field oil production increase with Figure 9 -– Lift-gas rate allocation at each riser
optimized gas lift rate (red line) – Eclipse optimizer no lift-gas allocated for riser P30

Run 4 – Optimizing gas lift using the NexusTM optimizer

Nexus reservoir simulator has an optimizer feature for gas lift injected inside a network. The optimizer maximizes an objective
function based on the profit. We fixe a value o 70$ for the oil price, 1$ for the gas lift cost and no cost for the water production
and no value for the produced gas price.
Fig. 10 depicts the corresponding increase in total oil production and the associated lift gas allocation found by the optimizer.
Fig. 11 depicts the gas-lift rate allocated inside each riser. The total oil production is 30,125 MSTB, The total gas lift quantity
injected at 4020 days is 120,249 Mscf.
Hence, the objective function for run 4 is equal to 1,95 B$.

Figure 10 - Field oil production increase with Figure 11 – Lift-gas rate allocation for each riser
optimized lift- gas rate (red line) – Nexus optimizer no lift-gas found for riser P30

The second option available in Nexus is to give an optimal lift gas curve. With this option, the total oil production is 28,624
MSTB and the total gas lift quantity injected after 11 years days becomes 111,469 Mscf.
Hence, the objective function for run 4 with the optimal lift gas curve is equal to 1,89 B$.

Run 5 – Optimizing gas lift with GAPTM software

The explicit coupling surface reservoir methodology ECLIPSE-GAP is linked using RESOLVE. The GAP model is shown
in Fig. 5. The coupling time period is 15 days, the parameters optimized by GAP are the 25 pressure drops at each well
SPE 130912 11

manifold and the 4 gas lift quantities at each riser. Fig. 12 depicts the corresponding increase in total oil production (black line
versus dotted blue curve) and the associated lift-gas allocation found by the optimizer (red line).

Figure 12 -- Field oil production increase with optimized lift gas rate (red line) – GAP optimizer

The objective function in run 5 is the total oil production and does not include the lift gas cost. It may be possible to include it
but we had no enough time and not enough experience of the software to incorporate it. So the results are a bit different of the
previous one. The total oil production is 30,000 MSTB and the total gas lift quantity injected after 11 years is much higher
239,913 Mscf. Hence, the objective function for run 5 with the optimal lift gas curve is equal to 1,86 B$.The behavior of the
optimizer and the optimized lift curve are oscillating, reasons may come from the explicit coupling technique or some
unappropriate settings in the optimizer.

Run 6 – Optimizing gas lift with a gradient method

For this run, we started gas lift after 1,7 year (at the end of the plateau), we cut the next 9,3 predictive years in 11 time
intervals varying from 6 months to one year. During each time interval, 4 constant values of gas lift are allocated at each riser.
Each gas lift rate value is a parameter of the gradient method. We end up with 44 parameters values.
This global method depends strongly on the initial values. Setting the 44 parameters to basic initial guess values (0 or 30,000
Mscf /day or 15,000 Mscf/day) ends up after 50 iterations to local minima and the final objective function is lower than the 3
optimum found by the previous local methods (run 3, run 4 and 5) . Setting the initial values as the optimized values found in
run 4, a better optimized solution could be find. The evolution of the objective function is indicated in Fig. 13.

Figure 13 - Objective function evolution versus iteration – steepest descent method

Fig. 14 depicts the corresponding increase in total oil production and the associated lift gas allocation found by the optimizer.
Fig. 15 depicts the gas-lift rate allocatedinside each riser. The total oil production is 29,384 MSTB and the total gas lift
quantity injected after 11 years is much lower 78,969 Mscf then the previous run. The main change is the suppression of gas
12 SPE 130912

lift allocation in branch 1 and the narrowing of the allocation in branches 2 and 4. Hence, the objective function for run 6 is
equal to 1,98 B$.

Figure 14 - Field oil production increase with Figure 15 - Lift gas rate allocation for each riser –
optimized lift gas rate (red line) no lift for riser P30-P10 – Gradient method

Run 7 – Optimizing gas lift with an experimental design method

We limit the number of gas lift parameters to 11 in order to get a reasonable amount of simulations. We end ups with 3
periods (2 with 4 varying riser allocations, 1 with 3 varying and one fixed). For this specific case, the analysis of the first
bench of experiments shows that the allocation in riser 3 has very limited effect on the oil production, so we could split the
prediction in 4 periods (3 with 3 parameters and one with 2 parameters). The method produces such responses as the total oil
production (or the profit in including the lift cost) indicated in Fig 16. The maximum value is obtained for the indicated
combination of parameters in normalized values between -1 and 1. For this case, -1 corresponds to zero allocation, 0
corresponds to 15,000 Mscf/day and +1 to 30,000 Mscf/day. This method has some interest for a sensibility analysis of a
given parameter (for example, effect on the total recovery of a lift-gas allocation inside a given branch at a specific time
period), the cloud of curves of Fig. 16 can be depicted with a gradation of colors according to the specific parameter value. It
can help for choosing the parametric representation but the low limit in terms of parameters is a serious drawback for gas lift
optimization.

Experiment number 146

Figure 16: Sensitivity analysis – Total oil production versus time – best parameters combination
SPE 130912 13

Conclusions
The paper has presented various techniques for optimizing gas lift inside a surface network. These techniques have been
compared and evaluated on a test case based on SPE 9. The size of the reservoir model of the test case is small (9000 cells
with a black oil model) but the network we added (25 oil producers, 4 branches, 4 lift gas injectors) has enough complexity to
be representative of a real field case. Reservoir data of the SPE 9 test case are published and the network data we added have
been extensively indicated in the paper in order to allow the reader to reproduce the results and compare them with other
techniques.
Six methods for optimizing the lift-gas have been examinated: three industrial methods available in commercial reservoir
simulators and three “open-source’ methods issued from the research community. We could have time to compare five
methods on the adapted SPE 9 test case.
The first two methods optimized the lift quantities at each timestep, the third one at a given fixed time interval, the gradient
method and the experimental design methods at the end of the whole prediction and the ensemble Kalman Filter technique at
the end of each user-defined report steps.
The three industrial methods could find an optimum solution but the three obtained solutions are different. It seems easier to
find an optimized solution for runs 1 and 2 when the simulator solves the reservoir equations implicitly coupled with the
network equations. The gradient method solution is strongly dependent on the initial parameters values. We could find a better
optimum only when we set the initial parameters values to the optimized values found in run1 or run2. Nevertheless, the
gradient method allows to define an optimum lift curve as piecewise functions where the time intervals are chosen by the user.
Due to operational constraints, the optimum lift gas allocation indicated in Fig. 9, 11 or 12 cannot be practically applied since
the field compressors settings cannot be changed at any time, the possibility for the field engineer to set the dates when the gas
lift injection settings could be changed is a practical advantage. The gas lift optimization can be done in two phases, a first
optimization to get the ideal shapes and a second one with a parameter based optimization method where the time intervals are
prescribed according to operational constraints.
The experimental design technique can help for choosing the parametric representation but the low limit in terms of
parameters is a serious drawback for gas lift optimization.
Some additional work is necessary on the Ensemble Kalman Filter technique. It seems to be suitable for the gas lift
optimization problem but some adjustments are needed to find the adequate components to include in the state vector and
some work is needed to create an industrial simulation workflow.

Nomenclature
BHP = Bottomhole pressure
THP = well head pressure
Q = flow rate
ALQ = Artificial lift quantity - unit Mscf/day or Msm3/day
k = number of time intervals
p= number of risers
N = number of ensembles
nbm= Total number of grid blocks
y = Component state vector
Y = Ensemble state vector

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Total S.A. for permission to publish this work.

References
1. Fang WY and Lo K. K. “ A Generalized Well-Management Scheme for Reservoirs Simulation”, Paper SPE 29124-PA, SPE Reservoir
and Evaluation & Engineering 11 (2): 116-120
2. Hepguler G.,Barua S., Bard W “Integration of a field surface and production Network with a Reservoir simulator” Paper SPE 38937 –
PA, SPECA 12 (4) 88 -92
3. Wang P. “Development and Application of Production Optimization Techniques for Petroleum Fields “ Phd dissertation, Stanford,
California , Stanford University
4. Davidson J E and Beckner BL 2003. “Integrated Optimization for Rate Allocation in Reservoir Simulation”, Paper SPE 87309-PA –
SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering 6 (6): 426-432.
5. Kosmidis VD, Perkins JD, Pistikopoulos EN”Optimization of Well Oil rate Allocation in Petroleum fields”, Industrial & Engineering
Chemistry Research 43 (14) 353-3527
6. Ray T., Sarker. R “Multiobjective Evolutionary Approach to the solution of Gas Lift Otimization problems”, IEEE Congress on
Evolutionary Computation, 2006
7. Wang P, Litvak M: “Gas lift Optimuzation for Long Term Reservoir simulations” Paper SPE 90506 presented at the 2004 SPE Annual
Technical Conference and Exhibition, Houston, 26-29 September.
14 SPE 130912

8. Lepine O., Bissel R. C., Aanonsen S. I., Pallister I. , Barker J. W. “Uncertainty analysis in predictive reservoir simulation using
Gradient information’, Paper SPE 48997 presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, New Orleans 27-30
September
9. Roggero F, Guerillot D.,”Gradient Method and Bayesian Formalism – Application to Petrophysical Parameter Characterization”, paper
presented at the 5th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, Loeben, Austria, 3-6 September
10. Evensen G, “The ensemble Kalman filter: theoretical formulation and practical implementation”, Ocean Dynamics 53, 343-367
11. Evensen G, “Data assimilation , The Ensemble Kalman Filter”,2007,Springer, Berlin
12. Chen Y., Oliver D.S., Zhang D. “Efficient Ensemble-Based Closed-Loop Production Optimization” paper SPE 112873 presented at the
2008 SPE/DOE Improved Oil recovery Symposium, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 19-23 April.
13. Su H, Oliver D. S.”Smart Well Production Optimization Using an Ensemble-Based method”, paper SPE 126072 presented at the 2009
SPE Saudi Arabia Section Technical Symposium and Exhibition, Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia-9-11 May.
14. Schlumberger, ECLIPSE Technical Manual, Schlumberger Information Solution
15. Landmark, Nexus Technical Reference Guide, Landmark Halliburton
16. Landmark VIP-EXECUTIVE Technical Reference, Landmark , Halliburton
17. Annan, J. D. and Hargreaves, J. C.. 2004. Efficient parameter estimation for a highly chaotic system. Tellus A, 56 (5): 520-526
18. Brouwer, D.R. and Jansen, J.-D. 2004. Dynamic Optimization of Water Flooding With Smart Wells Using Optimal Control Theory.
SPEJ 9(4): 391– 402. SPE-78278-PA.
19. Handels, M., Zandvliet, M.J., Brouwer, D.R., and Jansen, J.D. 2007. Adjoint-Based Well-Placement Optimization Under Production
Constraints. Paper SPE 105797 presented at the SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, Houston, 26– 28 February
20. Sarma, P., Aziz, K., and Durlofsky, L.J. 2005. Implementation of Adjoint Solution for Optimal Control of Smart Wells. Paper SPE
92864 presented at the SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 31 January– 2 February.
21. Sarma, P., Durlofsky, L.J., Aziz, K., and Chen, W. 2005. Efficient Real-Time Reservoir Management Using Adjoint-Based Optimal
Control and Model Updating. Computational Geosciences, 10 (1), 3-36.
22. Carrol, J.A. and Horne, R.N.. 1992. Multivariate optimization of production systems. J. Petroleum Technology. 44 (7): 782-
23. Yeten, B., Durlofsky, L.J., and Aziz, K. 2003. Optimization of Nonconventional Well Type, Location, and Trajectory. SPEJ 8 (3):
200– 210. SPE-86880-PA
24. Killough J. E.: ″Ninth SPE Comparative Solution Project: A reexamination of Black Oil Simulation″, Paper SPE 29110 presented at the
1995 SPE Reservoir Symposium on Reservoir Simulation, San Antonio, Texas, 12-15 February.