Control and Optimization of Oil Production Using Natural Gas Lift

This paper presents a method for controlling and optimization of an oil production system using natural gas lift concept. The process of natural gas lift consists of commingled production of an oil bearing formation with a gas bearing formation. In this process, gas is entered to oil well in a controlled manner. Ever-increasing development of Smart Well technology and various applications of downhole monitoring and controlling instruments along with new methods of data transmission make it possible the natural gas lift system to be controlled and optimized more effectively and faster than before. With this technology it is possible to monitor the downhole conditions of gas and oil zones and to control the inflow valves in gas and oil zones. In this work, a Proportional Integral Differential (PID) feedback controller has been used to smartly control the entrance of gas from gas zone to oil well. The optimization of this process to determine the optimum setpoint of controller has been done by Differential Evolution method.