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.
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