Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well
Mr. Wasin Saengnumpong ID 537 16080 21 Production Project Assignment, Production Engineering 2106564

Abstract
Inflow control devices (ICD) are the sand face completion equipment with the objective of creating uniform flow profile across horizontal wells, delaying early water breakthrough, and preventing water coning and/or gas cusping. This report demonstrated the water coning/breakthrough problem for the horizontal wells. And the application of ICD to solve the early water production problem. The case studies of completion simulation which were extracted from Liang -Bio Ouyang (2009) were also discussed in this report. Finally, the simulation results show that using the optimized ICD have successfully limi the t effect of heel to toe and can delaying water coning/breakthrough.

Introduction to the ICD

Figure 1. Illustrates an orifice type ICD, oil flowing from the reservoir will enter at the entry point and pass the restriction flow area (for this case is an orifice). Therefore the pressure drop is induced before the oil enter the tubing.

Figure 1. An orifice type ICD

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Description of specific production problem

For the horizontal well along the heel to toe section have a pressure gradient due to the frictional pressure loss. Then when petroleum flow into the well with the difference well flowing pressure, cause the non-balance inflow from the reservoir which is resulting in water coning/breakthrough problem as illustrated in Figure 2. For the Heterogeneous reservoirs such as layering systems the water breakthrough problem also occur as in the Figure 3.

Without ICD

With ICD

Figure 2. The water coning/breakthrough in homogenous reservoir

Without ICD

With ICD

Figure 3. The water coning/breakthrough in heterogeneous reservoir

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Application of an ICD on Reducing Water Production

The main function of an ICD is providing an additional pressure drop at particular zone, and then an ICD can be applied to reduce the water production by the following method. 1. Delaying the water breakthrough through the water coning or the high permeability path , by decreasing the pressure drawdown at that zone, with resulting in thelower production rate from this zone. As shown on the Figure x, the ICD was optimized set to math each layer pressure drawdown and permeability. The pressure drop at ICD, DPICD = Pnw - Pwf and the pressure drawdown, DPDD = Pr - Pnw The disadvantage of this solution is total well production rate is lower by the ICD and to carry out this solution the exact reservoir properties must be determined before design the optimized ICD, otherwise the result would be miss from the expected one.

Figure x. Balancing of Inflow by using ICD at each layer (After Liang -Biao Ouyang (2009))

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

2. Blocking the high water saturation zone As shown in the Figure x, the same principle as previous section is introduced again. The flow from high water saturation is blocked by ICD, but the petroleum production also decreasing. About this application, Liang- Biao Ouyang (2009) had suggested that the water may flow parallel to the wellbore and flow into the others zones as in the Figure x.

Figure x. Using ICD for Inflow Balancing in high water production zone (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

From my point of view, Even though these applications reduce the total production rate but the benefit is the less capacity of water treatment at the surface requirement. This may help the cost of water handling at the surface. By the way, the case studies of these two solutions are presented in the next section, the appropriate of the solutions would also further discuss.

Case Studies
The case st ies presented here are extracted from Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009), first case is an example of using IC to prevent early water breakthroughs. Second case is an example of using IC to blocking the water production from high water saturation zone. For both cases the 4000 ft along the wellbore section of horizontal well was investigated. The well completion simulation software tool used for solving both case is NEToolTM

First Case
The simulate reservoir and fluid properties distribution along the 4000 ft wellbore section are shown in Figure 5. the fluid drainage section was divided into 4 sections, as in table 1. Table 1. Each section details Section 1. 2. 3. 4. Measured Depth (ft) 5000 5500 5500 7000 7000 8000 8000 - 9000 Permeability (mD) 200 900 300 200 Sw 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 So 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9

The created three scenarios was set as A. B. Slotted liner completion: slotted liner is used along the entire wellbore section. Uniform ICD completion: ICD with same setting is installed along the entire wellbore section. C. Optimized ICD completion: ICD with optimized setting with reservoir parameter is installed along the entire wellbore section.

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Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Figure 5. Reservoir properties and their distribution along the wellbore section (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

Figure 6. Pressure Drawdown along the wellbore section (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Figure 6. shows the pressure drawdown for each scenario. It clearly sees that optimized (scenario efficient ICD C) in completion has reducing more the

pressure drawdown for high permeability section. Figure 7, 8 also show the achievement of optimized ICD in control the uniform inflow along the entire
Figure 7. Oil Production Profile along the Wellbore Section (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

wellbore section.

The

comparison

of

total

production rate are shown in Table 2. ,the scenario C with optimized ICD yield the lowest production rate compare to the others scenarios. In the other hand, even the scenario A (slot liner) yield the highest

production rate but it came with the highest chance of water conning
Figure 8. Sandface Pressure (blue curve) and Tubing Pressure (pink curve) along the Wellbore Section (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

/breakthrough in the future.

Table 2. Comparison of Oil, Gas and total production with Different Completion Scenarios Scenarios A. Slotted liner completion B. Uniform ICD completion C. Optimized ICD completion Qo (STB/d) 3357.0 3289.0 1619.0 Qg (MMscf/d) 2.49 2.44 1.20 Qtotal (rb/d) 3524.8 3453.5 1670.0

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

Second Case The same type of data like in the first case are given in the Figure 9, but for this case all sections have the same permeability and varying the oil and water saturations instead.

As shown in Figure 9, the section 2 (5500-7000 MD) has the highest Sw and was expected to produce a significant amount of water from this zone. The completion scenarios with each results production rate and percent of water cut are shown in Table 3.

Figure 9. Reservoir properties and their distribution along the wellbore section (After Liang-Biao Ouyang (2009))

Table 3. Comparison of Oil, Gas and Water production with Different Completion Scenarios

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

As expected result, the Slotted Liner completion produce highest rate with highest water cut. For ICD completions, the important thing is the significant different of water cut between 4 scenarios, it can infer that despite of the ICD was set but without optimized it with reservoir data, layer location, layer properties (permeability, phase saturation, etc.) and the predicted amount of inflow, it cannot cut much of water production compare to the optimized case.

Discussi

s and Future work

From the two case studies, the use of optimized ICD for preventing water coning/breakthrough is quite effective solution. But for the water blocking case, if the water production from that zone is very high, Neglect this zone may be a good option (blank pipe case). It can see that for the second case study, we have to consider the economical aspect and its efficiency of the solution. In short, I consider the ICD application for blocking water production is not quite effective because ICD itself is not design for trim out the water and if the interesting section has contribute a significant of oil production also then blocking this kind of section may be not feasible except the future work on an intelligent ICD with phase filtering capability for blocking the undesired phase. This type of ICD is on developing right now but not yet successfully. However, an ICD may be optimal initially, but not when the reservoir pressure is depleted. Moreover, for the volatile oil the gas can liberate out at the ICD due to the pressure drop below bubble point, causing the gas blocking the fluid flow along the horizontal well bore section.

Reducing the water production by using an Inflow Control Device (ICD) in horizontal well

10

Conclusion
1. The ICD was proved to be effective in preventing water coning/breakthrough in horizontal well with Heel to Toe effect for both homogenous and heterogeneous reservoirs. 2. From the case studies, the result shows that the ICD completion will not successful if we do not know the accurate reservoir data to optimized the ICD. 3. In my view, ICD can be apply to the vertical well to prevent water coning/breakthrough from the heterogeneous reservoirs such as layering systems, fractured system, etc. 4. For the flooding process like steam flood or water flood, ICD completion will help stabilized the frontal displacement and increase the sweep efficiency then the water breakthrough will be delayed.

References
1. F. T. Al-Khelaiwi and D. R. Davies: Inflow Control Devices: Application and Value Quantification of a Developing Technology, paper SPE 108700, presented at the 2007 International Oil Conference and Exhibition in Mexico, 27-30 June 2007, Veracruz, Mexico 2. Bernt S. Aadnoy and Geir Hareland: Analysis of Inflow Control Devices, paper SPE 122824, present at the 2009 SPE Offoreshore Europe Oil &Gas Conference & Exhibition in UK, 8-11 September 2009 3. Liang-Bio Ouyang: Practical Consideration of an Inflow Control Device Ap plication for Reducing Water Production, paper SPE 124154, present at the 2009 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 47 October 2009 4. http://www.halliburton.com/public/cps/contents/Presentations/EquiFlow_ICD.pdf