Abstract
In the current decade as the result of increasing volume of waste all over the world, the effect of discharging produced water on the environment has lately signified and became an environmental concern. Therefore controlling excessive water production is one of the challenges in mature and declining oil and gas fields. Nowadays, statistics show that ratio of produced water to oil is 3 to1, and thus the largest waste stream generated in oil and gas industries, is produced water. It is a mixture of different organic and inorganic compounds especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) that has detrimental destructive effects on marine environment.
Recently water management becomes ever more important as more green fields changes to brown fields in the struggle to supply a world hungry for hydrocarbon. So improved water management practices are being implemented worldwide to maximize well productivity and reduce destructive effect of produced water discharge. Because of this environmental awareness, recently stringent regulations have established on discharge of produced water. Various methods such as drilling horizontal wells, water shut-off jobs and using smart devices have different degrees of success in decreasing water production. A smart well is the one with downhole instrumentation installed on the production tubing.
Using smart well technology in Middle East fields in order to control water production had been experienced and it had considerable outcome especially in multilateral wells. Based on strategic importance of South Pars as the greatest gas field in the world and the probability of increasing its water cut especially from deep gas layers in near future, feasibility study of implementing smart solution in south pars gas field has been surveyed. Here in this paper environmental harmful impact of produced water from this field and application of smart well technology for water cut reduction has been investigated.
