Artificial Lift Gas Flow Control System for Oil-Producing Wells

Abstract

The research was geared toward the development of a flow control system for oil-producing wells through artificial gas lift using the Network Data Acquisition System (Net-DAS), to optimize the operations carried out by Remote Terminal Units (RTU) located in the control cabins near oil producing wells. The study was limited to the Gas Lift wells in the Carito field of Petroleos de Venezuela. S.A. (PDVSA). The variable to be measured is the gas flow that is injected into said wells through a control valve that is activated by an actuator that works in four operating states in the Net-DAS. However, variables such as pressure and temperature can also be viewed from the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. The proposed control system is based on the LinPAC-8381 RTU with Net DAS architecture. The proposal enables the establishment of a local control by migrating the programming logic controller (PLC) control logic to the Net-Das architecture. This allows the plant operator to work in four states to control the amount of flow to be injected into the well: local control and remote control, which in turn is divided into manual, automatic and optimized remote control, which maximizes the extraction of crude oil.