Abstract
Reservoir performance monitoring can provide real-time information that can enable more timely operational decisions to be made. Often, the data can be collected without performing an intervention. This paper will discuss one of the newest reservoir monitoring techniques — fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing or DTS and some of the recent successes provided by DTS that are enabling it to be considered as an integral service for reservoir monitoring.
DTS can provide a temperature profile of the entire wellbore in real time, which in turn, can provide an enhanced understanding of the downhole flow (or injection) profile. Historically, DTS has been a niche service for steamflood and geothermal applications due to its high bottomhole temperature (BHT) survivability. Acceptance of the technology, deployments costs, and value added are the reasons applications outside of steamflood and geothermal wells are being recognized.
This paper presents three cases of non-steamflood applications of DTS. All three cases are from an oilfield in north-central Sumatra, Indonesia. Each illustrates how the use of DTS optimized the completion and/or improved the well/reservoir management strategies. The three cases provided the following services:
Determined fluid level for electrical submersible pump (ESP) optimization.
Monitored realtime fracture-height growth during a mini-frac treatment.
Flow profiled in an artificial lift completion where the producing interval was inaccessible for a conventional production logging test (PLT).
