Gas Lift is more important than it seems
As per figures from Lufkin Industry established in 2012, most wells use rod pumping (80%). ESP comes in 2nd position with 11%, followed by Progressive Cavity Pump (PCP) with 4% then Gas Lift (3%), and other methods (2%).
Looking at these numbers, one could think that Gas Lift is not very important. But several things need to be understood. First, most of the wells equipped with rod lift are in North America and produce less than 10 bopd. When looking at maintaining world production, these wells play a minor role in comparison with the number of wells. Once excluding these wells, we end up with 3 artificial lift methods sharing most of the remaining artificial lift wells.
Gas Lift is the most common Artificial Lift method in offshore environment
While Gas Lift is the smallest of the 3 in quantity, its importance is not to be neglected. It is indeed the predominant method used in the offshore environment where the average production per well is much higher than in the onshore environment. Its role in maintaining the world oil production and replenishing reserves is, therefore, more significant than its 4th position in the discussed ranking.
Gas Lift can take many forms in a well like continuous Gas Lift, Intermittent Gas Lift, Annular Flow, Plunger Lift, as a back up in ESP completion, combined with jet or hydraulic pumping, Concentric Gas Lift, Dual Gas Lift Completion…
