Abstract
Water coning has been observed to have a negative impact on the productivity of producing wells. This situation often results in reduction of recoverable oil reserves. The application of Intelligent Well Technology (IWT) offers an operator the opportunity to manage this adverse effect and improve productivity of such wells. IWT provides an operator the capability to remotely control, monitor and manage multiple horizons in a given well. Application of the technology has provided significant value, through the ability to control multiple zones independently, reduce total number of wells, reduce future costly well intervention, and accelerate production of zones to maintain a plateau for extended period of time.
This paper presents the results of a simulation case study carried out in a Gulf of Mexico field. The study objective was to assess the capability of an IWT completion to control excessive downhole water production and maximise total oil volume in a three layer reservoir system. A dynamic optimisation technique was used in the reservoir simulator to independently control the Interval Control Valves (ICVs) in each zone to achieve the desired production objective. The ICVs are modelled as downhole chokes that are connected to a standard well model. The optimisation procedure monitors these chokes while the simulation is running and controls them as required.
The results show that the IWT system was able to minimise the volume of water produced by the well in the studied coning condition when compared to conventional system. This is mainly due to the choking capability of the ICVs. We also estimated an oil recovery increase of about 63% when compared to a conventional system. Potential applications of the technology should be assessed with regard to well/reservoir objectives.
