OPERATION OF WELLS ON THE MEDVEZHIE GAS FIELD ON THE BASIS OF PLUNGER LIFT AT A FINAL STAGE OF THE FIELD DEVELOPMENT

The world largest Medvezhie field, which already produced over 1500 bcm of gas, is at the final stage of development. From the very beginning of operation (from 1972) the main part of gas is produced from wells equipped with 65/8 ″ production tubing. In a number of wells due to decreased gas flow rate in production tubings the formation water and condensation water are accumulated which sharply decreases the well’s production rate; the wells operation is also complicated due to water accumulation in the borehole at gas velocities in the production tubing insufficient for lifting water to the wellhead, which results in the rock wetting and destruction of the producing formation, bottomhole sand production with a possible formation of a lengthy sand plug at the well’s bottomhole. To improve operation of wells with 6 5/8 ” production tubing on the Medvezhie gas field plunger lift is testing. One unit of plunger is made of special rubber resistant to impact load and wear. After 8000 cycles of operation plunger failures were not observed. The plunger is in continuous up and down trip. On wells plunger lift will be applied with another function namely, for preventing drainage of water condensed from gas. Till now plunger lift in gas wells equipped with small-diameter production tubing has not been used