Reservoir optimized plunger lift technology reduces hydrocarbon emissions from aging gas wells

Highlights: • Aging natural gas wells generate hydrocarbon emissions through blowdown events. • Plunger lifts reduce the amount of production gas lost to emissions in aging wells. • Reservoir optimized plunger lifts yielded the greatest reduction in blowdown emissions. • The mitigation of blowdowns has widespread implications for natural gas infrastructure. Gas well liquification is a problematic process whereby liquids collect in the wellbore and near wellbore reservoir resulting in production impedance in aging gas wells. Removal of these liquids is traditionally performed through human operated blowdown events; however, this practice results in the release of hydrocarbon emissions into the atmosphere. The removal process, called 'deliquification', can also be accomplished through the utilization of various plunger lift technologies. These allow the extraction of retained fluids from the wellbore and near-wellbore reservoir; however, these technologies vary greatly with respect to automation, intelligence, and efficacy. Here we examined the rates of production loss and the frequency of emission events in mature natural gas wells equipped with various automated plunger lift technologies. Overall, 'intelligent' plunger lift systems that base their optimization on reservoir and wellbore conditions, as opposed to standardized or scheduled operations, performed the best exhibiting a 0.13% loss of production gas to atmospheric emissions compared to a 1.37% loss of production observed from wells without a plunger lift system. Additionally, wells equipped with a next generation reservoir optimized plunger lift demonstrated a reduced rate of production decline compared to those wells without a plunger lift technology (−0.066%/day and −0.242%/day, respectively). These data have widespread implications for the operational and environmental management of a consistently increasing count of aging natural gas production wells.