Summary This paper presents a comprehensive and integrated workflow to design completions for a heavy-oil recovery process that involves injection and production through the same well. Unlike in traditional completion design, the transient effects are particularly important to consider while analyzing the long-term performance for these types of completions to capture the effect of variations or uncertainties in reservoir and fluid-flow characteristics over time. The proposed integrated workflow involves initial screening and selection of flow-restricting completions that can meet the desired injection and production performance based on a detailed wellbore hydraulics modeling tool. A select few completions are then analyzed for longer-term performance using a reservoir simulator that couples the flow-restricting nature of completions with flow in the reservoir. The use of best-in-art wellbore hydraulics model and reservoir simulator in a staged process yields an effective way to assess and optimize the completion design for these wells in a reduced time span. The workflow disclosed here can be used to design effective completions for a broad class of cyclic liquid-injection methods for heavy-oil resources.
Long-term completion performance is important for the economic development of any field. As fields are now developed in environments that are capital intensive and increasingly technically challenging, new technologies are required for optimization of the completion design. Stand-alone reservoir simulators lack the required detail on the completion side, while stand-alone wellbore simulators do not have the long-term reservoir performance information available. Even the new class of coupled wellbore/reservoir simulators often lack comprehensive completion design capabilities. We have developed a fully-coupled black-oil wellbore/reservoir model which accounts for the necessary details for an optimized completion design. Specifically, the model couples ExxonMobil's proprietary reservoir simulator and a detailed completion hydraulics simulator such that the reservoir flow, wellbore tubing and annulus flows, and pressure fields are simulated simultaneously. In this paper, we compare different synthetic cases involving open-holes, pre-drilled liners, packers, and inflow control devices that demonstrate unique completion opportunities captured by using our modeling capabilities. We show that our model provides not only detailed information regarding the tubing and annulus flow and the associated pressure drops along the completion, but also the impact of different completion types on short- and long-term reservoir recovery. Our results show the significance of this new coupled approach in its ability to relate the reservoir performance and the flow dynamics through various completion types.
This paper presents a comprehensive and integrated workflow to design completions for a heavy oil recovery process that involves injection and production through the same well. Unlike in traditional completion design, the transient effects are particularly important to consider while analyzing the long-term performance for these types of completions to capture the effect of variations or uncertainties in reservoir and fluid flow characteristics over time. The proposed integrated workflow involves initial screening and selection of flow restricting completions that can meet the desired injection and production performance based on a detailed wellbore hydraulics modeling tool. A select few completions are then analyzed for longer term performance using a reservoir simulator that couples the flow restricting nature of completions with flow in the reservoir. The use of best-in-art wellbore hydraulics model and reservoir simulator in a staged process yields an effective way to assess and optimize the completion design for these wells in a reduced time span. The workflow disclosed here can be used to design effective completions for a broad class of cyclic liquid injection methods for heavy oil resources.
This paper studies the effect of viscosity and fines particle loading on the pressure drop across a 4mm orifice in a specific geometry built to mimic a representative well completion. In previous studies, most of these orifices have been validated experimentally for viscosities up to 200cp only for such completions. The current study focused on a wider viscosity variation (1cp – 3000cp) with lower flow rates (0.1m3/day - 30m3/day). The pressure drop was measured across the orifice and through the entire pipe assembly. The measured data was non-dimensionalized using the Euler number and plotted against the Reynolds number for all the rates and viscosities. The orifice pressure drop data overall agreed well with the limited data that was available from the literature. It was also compared and validated against commercially available CFD software. The effect of sand particle loading was also studied and its effect on apparent viscosity increase was measured in the laboratory. The pressure drop-flow rate relationship disclosed in this paper can be used to design effective completions for intermediate/high viscosity oil applications and will be able to predict the completions pressure drop more accurately.
Summary This paper studies the effect of viscosity and fines-particle loading on the pressure drop across a 4-mm orifice in a specific geometry built to mimic a representative well completion. It also provides experimental data in the range of operating conditions (high aspect ratio, low Reynolds number) that were not covered by any previous studies. The past experiments concentrated on studying the orifices with high aspect ratio (>1) and high Reynolds number (>1,000) or with a combination of low aspect ratio and low Reynolds number. In previous research conducted within the petroleum industry, most of these orifices were validated experimentally for viscosities up to 200 cp only for such completions. The current study focused on a wider viscosity variation (1 to 3,000 cp) with lower flow rates (0.5 to 30 m3/d). Even though fines are an integral part of the flow stream passing through the orifice for a sand reservoir, none of these studies further considered the effect of small particles on the orifice performance. The pressure drop was measured across the orifice and through the entire pipe assembly. The measured data were nondimensionalized by use of the Euler number and plotted against the Reynolds number for all rates and viscosities. The data were also compared and validated against commercially available computational-fluid-dynamics (CFD) software. The effect of sand-particle loading was also studied, and its effect on apparent viscosity increase was measured in the laboratory. The pressure-drop/flow-rate relationship and flow coefficient disclosed in this paper can be used to design effective completions for intermediate- to high-viscosity-oil applications and will be able to predict the completion pressure drop more accurately.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.