ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Georeservoirs
This article is part of the Research TopicIntelligent Artificial Lift and Multiphase Flow in the Wellbore in the Oil and Gas Production SystemsView all 4 articles
Study on Liquid Carrying Law and Foam Drainage System Optimization Design for Liquid-Loading Gas Wells
Provisionally accepted
- 1Liaohe Oilfield of China National Petroleum Corp, Panjin, China
- 2Changzhou University, Changzhou, China
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With the global energy demand on the rise, natural gas plays a crucial role. However, wellbore liquid loading restricts the stable production of gas fields in their mid-to-late stages—affecting approximately 40% of the gas wells in the Liaohe Oilfield. Foam As-sisted Lift (FAL) is a mainstream solution, but it is plagued by issues in the design of crude dosing parameters, which either lead to chemical waste or result in operational failure. This study focused on Wells Y-1, Y-2, and Y-3 (Well Y-1 did not adopt foam drainage technology; although Well Y-2 achieved a good liquid production effect after the application of foam drainage technology, it had the problem of excessive foam drainage agent injection; Well Y-3, which also used foam drainage technology, failed to meet the expected target in terms of foam drainage effect). This research treated foam as a special type of liquid to align with wellbore pressure and temperature models. It established a segmented liquid loading calculation model based on the casing-tubing pressure difference, a parameter optimization system for dosing, and validated critical liquid-carrying velocity models. The results showed that optimized FAL significantly enhanced liquid-carrying capacity (by 26.89% for Well Y-1 and 22.64% for Well Y-3) and reduced costs: the dosing amount for Well Y-2 was cut to 32.3% of the original, and the operation cycle for Well Y-3 was extended from 6 to 17 days. Additionally, the study confirmed the applicability of the Wang Yizhong model. The SP-7 foaming agent exhibited better performance under low-salinity conditions, with concentration, gas flow rate, and temperature exerting significant impacts on its efficacy. This research provides a foundation for efficient foam drainage in gas wells.
Keywords: Foam assisted lift, Wellbore liquid loading, foaming agent, Critical liquid-carryingvelocity, Production optimization design
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Hao, Leng, Meng, Wang, Pang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiangyu Meng, ainy-morning8@outlook.com
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