Evaluating the unloading gradient pressure in continuous gas-lift systems during petroleum production operations

Evaluating the performance, applicability, and field testing of various artificial lift methods, in particular continued gas-lift, can be time consuming and costly. To overcome these drawbacks, it is needed to propose a reliable model to estimate gas-lift applicability in advance of the installation under specific well operational conditions such as tubing size and design oil rate. In this study, the robust least square modification of support vector machine (LSSVM) methodology is implemented to propose a computer program, by which the unloading pressure gradient region can be determined in various design oil production rates and also tubing sizes. The developed LSSVM model results indicate 1.084% average absolute relative deviation from the corresponding unloading pressure gradient literature values, and squared correlation coefficient of 0.9994.