A Novel Workflow for Intelligent Well Inflow Control Valve Design by Integrating Reservoir Dynamics to Facilitate Proactive Reservoir Management in Minagish Field, West Kuwait

Abstract

The appropriate inflow control valve (ICV) design plays an important role for achieving adequate proactive reservoir management, production management and improving oil recovery. The smart completion consisting of custom designed inflow control valves along with downhole gauges are proven to be the great tool for maximizing sweep efficiency in Minagish Field, West Kuwait. The demonstrated benefits include reduction of unwanted water production, equalization of inflow profile, elimination of cross flow across laterals in multilateral wells and optimization of water injection allocation resulted in increasing sustained well productivity and maximizing oil recovery. Further the downhole gauges provides required reservoir surveillance data on real time for effective reservoir and production monitoring. Moreover the real time surveillance and production control capabilities over entire well life enabled ability to take necessary actions at right time for facilitate defensive as well as proactive reservoir management. In addition the intelligent wells are proven to control the distribution of oil, water and gas in a well between different layers, compartments or reservoirs having high degrees of anisotropy and heterogeneity. The smart completions having optimally designed downhole inflow control valves are implemented in oil producers, water injectors, multilateral wells with ESP (Electrical Submersible Pump) and smart dump flood water injectors in Minagish Field. An integrated novel workflow is developed and multi-disciplinary team approach was followed for planning and design of smart completions by considering reservoir properties, geological data, petro-physical data and related uncertainties. Further the various production scenarios, well management scenarios, reservoir dynamics, reservoir uncertainties and reservoir management objectives were considered to select the most appropriate flow trim design of multi-position inflow control valves for wells having multi-zone intelligent completion, smart multilaterals and smart dump flood completions. Also, the right flow control option is included in well design, as it has an impact on the number of zones/intervals that can be realistically controlled in one well, and may affect the overall reliability of the integrated system. Previous field experiences have shown that the resulting benefits are diminished when the front end engineering does not considered suitable inflow control valve design and choke setting tailored to reservoir requirements and inherent uncertainties. The consequences of poor inflow control valve design is realized and found that only few choke positions are usable resulting in non-optimum well performance. Lessons learned from previous wells were incorporated in the new smart wells design and integrated workflow is developed by including the reservoir properties, reservoir dynamic response (e.g. water encroachment and time to breakthrough) and well operating constraints. The paper covers a novel workflow for inflow control valve design and chokes setting stepping distribution that assimilates reservoir properties, wellbore and production constraints. Also the paper details about established reservoir management and production management achieved by properly designed intelligent completions supported with long term well performance results.

A semi-implicit approach for the modeling of wells with inflow control completions

“…We consider that in an annulus, there is only one flow path for the fluid to go into the tubing through ICDs. Besides, for the multilateral wells, it is convenient to add in the tubing Inflow Control Valves (ICVs) to balance the flow rates from laterals and then optimize the production (Das and Al-Enezi, 2014).…”

“…In recent years both ICDs and ICVs have gained popularity and are being applied to a wide range of fields. Their efficiency has been studied through a variety of field cases (see, e.g., Al-Enezi et al, 2012;Al-Khelaiwi and Davies 2007;Al-Thuwaini et al, 2009;Broni-Bediako et al, 2019;Das and Al-Enezi, 2014;Dimitios et al, 2009;Gurses et al, 2019;Javid et al, 2018;Raffn et al, 2007).…”

“…Appropriate ICD/ICV completion design is the main factor for successful completion performance over the entire production life of wells. In many cases, a simplified semianalytical type approach is used to describe the pressure drop through ICDs for various design configurations (see, e.g., Das and Al-Enezi, 2014;Lauritzen and Martiniussen, 2011). During the design phase, the fluid flow along the well is taken into consideration in the modeling, and sometimes, annular flow is also considered.…”

“…During the design phase, the fluid flow along the well is taken into consideration in the modeling, and sometimes, annular flow is also considered. However, the inflow computation from the reservoir is generally simplified, using an analytical or semi-analytical approach (Das and Al-Enezi, 2014;Das et al, 2012). This kind of approaches can be considered suitable for a rapid design, which focuses only on the immediate near-well region and needs a fast response.…”