Abstract
In recent years, shape memory polymer materials (SMP) and conformable sand control technology have shown significant advantages to conventional gravel packing or expandable screen solutions by providing the right combination of operational simplicity, total conformance, wellbore stability, and superior filtration required for long-term sand control and effective production inflow from reservoirs. Contrary to gravel packing that requires most of the wellbore length to be covered by screen to help dehydrate the slurry, the shape memory material may be placed selectively across the sweet spots. This has led to the question about how much of the intervals would need to be covered to get maximum productivity with the minimum SMP coverage, thereby impacting the overall completion cost. This paper utilizes reservoir modeling based well completion simulation to evaluate the impact of the SMP cartridge design configuration and reservoir properties on well production performance and provide optimized screen design solutions to maximize well production in oil reservoirs.
The reservoir model and horizontal well completion with the SMP cartridge modules are built in a reservoir simulator. Three categories of simulation cases are performed to investigate their impact on production: the number of cartridges per well segment, cartridge locations and spacing, and reservoir properties such as permeability and capacity.
These case results are compared with a base case where conventional standalone screen is used. The comparisons are used to define maximized and/or most economical sand control solutions. The results provide an effective optimization solution for maximized cumulative well production in oil reservoirs. In low rate wells, the simulation results also provide a more economical solution for cost sensitive well completions. Simulation results demonstrate significant production improvements with conformable SMP technology over conventional screens and provide a useful workflow to optimize completion designs for different reservoirs.
