Abstract
Bhagyam is the second largest oilfield discovered to date in the Barmer Basin, India with more than 400mmb of viscous, waxy crude in place. This paper describes the evaluation, design and selection process for the use of the latest generation ICD in non-horizontal wells.
Sandface completions comprise sand screens coupled with an ICD. Inflow control was highly desirable due to the oil viscosity variation, high permeability, heterogeneity and adverse mobility ratio and the fact the completions could not be easily accessed below a PCP. Oil viscosity ranges from 20 to 250cp varying with depth. The variation in reservoir thickness, produced fluid viscosity and well productivity required a field adjustable pressure drop capability in the ICD. The ICD had to perform at high viscosity and needed to be tolerant to wax and sand production. The operator's experience in nearby fields observed the benefits of ICDs for providing efficient sandface cleanup in horizontal wells. It was vital to model this system accurately however there were significant challenges as no previous examples of using these devices in non-horizontal wells could be found and the ICD completion had not been modeled in a dynamic simulator for this scale of field development.
A dynamic simulation model which included the ICD completion was used to evaluate various completion options. A significant amount of work was performed to ensure the ICD was accurately modeled in the simulator. The simulations showed a long term benefit from using the ICD. To date 22 production wells have been completed with the ICD screen systems.
This is one of the first applications of the latest generation ICD in non-horizontal wells particularly on a full field scale. It is also a case study of modeling the ICD completion with a dynamic simulator.