How is Nitrogen Used in the Oil and Gas Industry? - YouTube

In today's video, we're going to take a look  at how nitrogen is used in oil gas operations. 

Nitrogen is commonly used both for upstream and  downstream oil gas operations because it's a  

neutral gas and this is very important when  dealing with combustible fluids and gas that  

are commonly found during the oil  gas operations.

It also doesn't react with metals to cause corrosion like oxygen and that's the reason why nitrogen is used instead of just air. 

And in addition, nitrogen is non-toxic.

Nitrogen is a highly compressible gas and it's usually stored under pressure and transported to the location in  specially designed nitrogen pumps and tankers.

Nitrogen is a very abundant gas and the  air we breathe is made up of about 78 percent nitrogen  

and that's the reason why it's relatively easy and cheap to extract nitrogen from the air.

There are several ways that can be used to extract nitrogen from the air.

The first one is a fractional distillation and consists of cooling air and then  breaking it down into different gases based on  

their boiling point.

The second method is using the membrane.

The air is passed through especially special fibers that can separate  it into different gases based on their speeds.

This is usually a slow process and the purity of the  nitrogen gas depends highly on the membrane used. 

The last method to extract the nitrogen from  the air is called pressure swing absorption.

And it works by pushing the compressed air  through the specially designed equipment  

with absorption material inside that absorbs  oxygen but lets nitrogen pass through.

Now let's take a look at the most common nitrogen  operations that we can encounter in the oil field. 

First, we have a well kick-off.

Some wells have  a very low bottom high pressure and when the wellbore is full of heavier fluid the well might  stop producing because the hydrostatic pressure is  

higher than bottom high pressure.

Nitrogen is often  used to lower the pressure of the hydrostatic column of the fluid in the wellbore by displacing the  heavier fluid from the well and bringing the well  

back to production.

Sometimes coil tubing is used  to pump nitrogen to the bottom of the well and lift the wellbore fluids.

Nitrogen is also  used for pipeline, plant and equipment purging

to remove oxygen and various hazardous combustible  

gases and chemicals.

This is often done to  prevent rusting during the non-operating time.

Next, we have a pipeline pigging and this involves  pushing a pig with nitrogen to clean the pipeline  

and remove any wall buildups.

Nitrogen is also  used for wall drilling intervention operations.

When working on the low-pressure wells, nitrogen  can be pumped along with the fluid to keep the hydrostatic pressure lower than the bottom hole  pressure to avoid the loss of returns in the well  

Nitrogen is also used for fracturing operations  especially when fracturing lower pressure  

formations and this nitrogen is pumped to  energize the formation.

This helps with the fluid flow back post frack and also decreases  the amount of fluid required for the frack. 

Nitrogen is also commonly used after coiled tubing operations to remove the fluid from the coil  

before the coiled tubing unit can travel.

This decreases the weight of the coil and prevents the

the potential freezing during the winter operations  as well as it slows down the corrosion especially  

if coil is not going to the next job  right away and it's stored in the shop. 

Nitrogen can also be used for pressure  testing various oil field equipment  

but one challenge with nitrogen is that it's  a gas and it means it's highly compressible so  

nitrogen is not an ideal fluid for pressure testing  when working with higher pressures.

And oftentimes

water is used instead.

And lastly nitrogen  is used for enhanced oil recovery operations

and it's done by injecting nitrogen into the  injection well and this increases the reservoir  

pressure and helps to increase the production from  the producing wells.

So these are some of the common nitrogen operations that  you might encounter in the oil field.  

Thanks, guys for watching this  video and I'll see you guys later!