The scope of this paper is to share a field experience with permanent inflow tracer deployment and monitoring of an intelligent multi-lateral well, completed with Smart-Liner (Limited Entry Liner). It will describe what ADNOC Offshore has learnt through inflow tracing clean up surveillance from several restarts and steady state production through inflow modelling interpretation techniques. This passive method of permanent monitoring technology utilizes chemistry and materials expertise to design tracers that release signature responses when they come into contact with either in-situ oil or formation water. The chemical tracer technology enables wireless monitoring capabilities for up to five years. Unique chemical tracers are embedded in porous polymer matrix inside tracer carriers along select locations in the lower completion to correlate where the oil and water is flowing in a production well. Interpreting tracer signals can provide zonal rate information by inducing transients to create tracer signals that are transported by flow to surface and captured in sample bottles for analysis. The measured signals are matched with models through history matching to yield zonal rate estimates. ADNOC Offshore has installed inflow tracers in an intelligent multi-lateral well to monitor laterals’ contributions, to verify new completion technology, and to estimate the flow profile from individual sections of Smart-Liner, run for the first time in the field. The interpretation results have been able to characterize inflow performance without any intervention in the well. Several restart and steady state surveys are planned to understand some key characteristics of the well completion and reveal how the well has changed since it was put on production. This technology will help allocate commingled production to the three laterals. The use of inflow tracers will provide multiple inflow surveys that will reduce operational risk, well site personnel, costs and will improve reservoir management practices. Permanent inflow tracing is expected to change the way production monitoring can be performed, especially in advanced wells where PLTs or Fiber Optic technology cannot access multi-laterals.
The field that will be discussed here is a giant heterogeneous carbonate field which is located in the Arabian Gulf approximately 135 km north-west of Abu Dhabi. The field consist of multi-stacked heterogenous reservoirs. The reservoir T is the shallowest reservoir which is still undeveloped and measures 9 km by 11.5 km, with OOIP estimated in 2.3 BSTB. The reservoir is sub divided into 2 layers with the gravity 35 °API oil with initial gas oil ratio of about 350 scf/STB. The reservoir pressure is 2,700 psi and the wells could not flow naturally due to low productivity and relatively low GOR against the high sealine pressure of more than 1,100 psi. There are only couple of solutions to produce these from this reservoir; either to lower the sealine or introduce "artificial lift". The wellhead towers in the field are old and don't have luxury of either gas lift or ESPs. A detailed and comprehensive study was performed, and a collaborative team of engineers was assigned to find a sustainable and cost-effective solution to produce reservoir "T" in order to evaluate its potential. The team conducted a detailed and comprehensive study of the field starting from reservoir "T" and then expanded to the other reservoirs. As a result, the proposal of an "In-Situ Gas Lift" (Auto Gas Lift) pilot was formulated to use gas from the reservoir "C" (underlying reservoir T) to lighten and artificially lift the oil produced from reservoir T. Auto Gas Lift (AGL) was selected due to the following advantages: Cost-effective artificial lift system.No surface modifications required on the wellhead towers.No additional pipeline to be laid. The completion has been designed in a way that the gas bearing zone will be perforated and DIAL system which enhances the efficiency of gas lift through downhole data monitoring and digital operations will be installed. Dial system will allow to adjust the downhole choke any time accordingly with the minimum power and footprint requirement at surface. The controlled produced gas will allow reservoir T to flow by reducing the hydrostatic head of the fluid column in the well. As the reservoir is subdivided into 2 layers so, the 2 drains will be drilled in each layer and their contribution will be controlled by inflow control valves (ICVs) which be equipped against each drain in upper completion. This will also allow us to flow the drains either one-by one or control commingled. But the ICVs manipulation could only be done with the portable unit with barge. Till date the artificial lift has not been implemented in the field, however ESPs will be installed and followed by the gas lift. The data gathering with AGL will help us designing the full fledge gas lift system in the field.
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