First Permanent Inflow Monitoring Experience in a Smart-Liner, Intelligent-Completion, Multi-Lateral Adnoc Offshore Well

Abstract

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.