How Significant is the Explosive Potential in a Gas Lifted Well ?

On more question. Alan, do you have any examples of this or you just trying to scare people into buying your new annular safety valves?

A gas lifted well is not a danger to the surrounding area as depicted in the photo. A rod pumping well or a well on any other for of artificial lift has the same annulus area as a gas lifted well. the pressure bleeds off rapidly in a catastrophic event. most wells don't have packers, so the casing is full of gas. This is not an issue in normal gas lift. Now single point gas lift that requires 4000 to 7000 psi to operate is a freaking bomb and will kill someone one day. The % of risk is very low with normal gas lift. Alan we don't need safety valves on normal gas lift wells. Stop trying to scare people when it is not justified.

Alan Brodie and all those who have contributed to the discussion point thank you. I have always been of the understanding that you are never too old to learn or be made aware of extra knowledge. Alan thanks for the informative and detailed responses to my questions they say a lot about the man and his passion for the subject. I fully support that GL annulus volumes are a threat and well owners need to address this into the future (which they won't) in all instances. I also feel rightly or wrongly, that GL annulus breaches solely causing an explosion has low probability. Instances where this breach could happen normally would be the result of a larger catastrophic incident with much larger volumes being released. Again that does not negate the validity of the subject. The development of mandrels with check valves, barrier spec GLV's, high quality elastomers etc all move towards mitigation of threat. Again I fully support the discussion which followed my comment on the cartoon and reference to Beirut directly related to GLgas in the annulus of a GL well and again thanks for taking the time to respond to an old man in Melbourne

Contd, When modelling well risk, often the A-annulus has the highest risk leak paths, even without gas lift. With an inventory of high-pressure gas in the A-annulus leak probability from the annulus can be several orders of magnitude higher than through the completion. Good well design, high reliability equipment and the insight of both objective risk analysis and dual barrier compliance are needed to avoid this.

Alan Brodie, nice post. In reality you wouldn’t need anything like a 70 tons of TNT explosion to be a very serious incident. All wells that can flow hydrocarbons are inherently hazardous. A well leaking for any significant time in excess of 1,000 bpd or 5 mmscfd on a platform or land, or 2,000 bpd or 20 mmscfd subsea, is likely to plot in the highest severity level of an oil company corporate risk matrix. This potential severity is up there with the most significant enterprise risks an oil company has to manage. The thing that prevents high severity becoming high risk is low leak probability. As you say, having dual barriers is important. You can have the highest specification single barrier and it can still fail unexpectedly, leaving nothing left to hold back the well. Gas lifted wells effectively operate on a single barrier if (1) flange / hub connection or instrumentation on an A-annulus outlet is exposed to lift gas pressure without a back-up means to shut off flow from the well or (2) the B annulus cannot sustain lift gas pressure.