Innovative Down-Hole Chemicals Conveyance System with Built in Dual Steering Wheels, First in Onshore Kuwait

Abstract

Produced fluids, from a tight deep carbonate reservoir extended laterally from West to South East Kuwait experienced severe asphaltene deposition along production tubing. This flow assurance challenge significantly increases well operating cost, risk and production deferment periods due to frequent Coiled Tubing (CT) cleaning jobs using considerable amount of expensive organic solvents. This flow assurance challenge is caused mainly due to the absence of any of strong reservoir aquifer support, continuous decline in reservoir pressure and high draw down across this tight reservoir in order to meet production targets. The objective of this pilot trial was to provide a long term solution with redundancy feature to convey chemicals safely from surface to down-hole through capillary tubes and pressure regulated chemical injection valves. Different techniques have been introduced since 1980 including batch chemical squeeze treatment, coated tubulars and Radio Frequency Vibration tools. Results of these trials have shown either short term production gain or no improvement on asphaltene build-up rate and well productivity. In order to dynamically mitigate this challenge, a dual in-situ chemical injection system was installed to convey chemicals deep inside the well on a continuous basis. The system was successfully installed and has provided a safe & reliable field qualifying tool to verify chemical performance at different injection parameters. The novelty of this technology is the ability to provide a continuous asphaltene management system to achieve production sustainability using dual injection conduits and down-hole pressure regulated valves utilizing relatively small amount of chemicals. This paper highlights the adopted approach of continuous asphaltene management system from hardware design & installation prospective to chemical qualifying process in the field and also shed light on the pilot trial lessons learned.