By Burney Waring, Consultant at WaringWorld, Inc.
Someone asked me recently about gas lift well instability. This is how I learned to determine if gas lift will be unstable, that is deciding if the well will exhibit casing heading.
As far as I know, this was invented by Dick ter Avest with Shell in 1995, but I think Wim der Kinderen was finally able to explain it to me so I could understand it.
By Burney Waring, Consultant at WaringWorld, Inc.
One of my clients brought this diagram to my attention recently. The paper, by Petroleum Development Oman and Engineering Insight Ltd of Aberdeen, was very useful and included an especially useful diagram, but the diagram was not so easy to read or print in a larger size. I tried to improve the image so that it would be even more helpful. All credit goes to the authors and their paper IPTC 17413 2014, available on SPE’s OnePetro.
Here is the full size diagram:
