Prognostics Thermal Well Management: A Review on Wellbore Monitoring and the Application of Distributed Acoustic Sensing DAS for Steam Breakthrough Detection

Abstract

Accurate prediction of flow regime and flow profile in wellbore is among the main interests of production engineers in the quest of optimizing wellbore production and increasing reliability of downhole completion tools especially in SAGD projects. This study introduces a methodology for wellbore monitoring by detecting flow phase and flow regime. In order to develop this method, an advanced multi-phase flow injection experiment was designed and commissioned. A flow injection setup was developed to test distributed fiber optic sensor installation under different operating conditions, including multi-phase flow (oil, brine and gas), and flow fraction scenarios. Different signal processing methods were applied to extract meaningful features and filter the noise from the raw signals. A statistical analysis was performed to assess the trend of the driven data. Then, typical SAGD models were simulated to assess the results of experimental setup for scale-up purpose and determination of local breakthrough of steam along the well. Results showed that the Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data contains different levels of signals for each phase and flow regime. We also found that some level of uncertainties is involved in relating the flow regime and DAS information which could be resolved by improving the sensor installation procedure. In addition, the application of data-driven machine learning methods was found necessary to interpret the signal patterns. Initial results have shown that steam breakthrough along the well can be detected using real time DAS high energy/frequency signals. It can be concluded that including the DAS along with Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) is necessary to provide a better picture of steam conformance and SAGD wellbore monitoring. The limitations of the current experimental setup restricted further conclusions regarding the hybrid DAS and DTS application. This paper is a part of an ongoing project to address the application of the combined DAS and DTS in SAGD projects. The ultimate goal is a downhole monitoring system to oversee the flow phase, flow regime and sand ingress in thermal application. The next phase will address the required improvements for developing a flow loop to handle high temperatures, include sand production and mimic thermal operation conditions.

Research Progress of Applying Distributed Fiber Optic Measurement Technology in Hydraulic Fracturing and Production Monitoring

“…The backward scattered light is collected and processed. As shown in Figure 2, when a vibration signal in the acoustic field is applied to the fiber, the length and refractive index of the fiber at that location changes [12]. This results in a change in the intensity of the backscattered Rayleigh light at that location.…”

“…The acoustic signal at each point along the fiber can be obtained by analyzing the difference in the backscattered Rayleigh light through spatial differential processing. The speed of light and the signal arrival time are known to allow the precise localization of the event generating the perturbation [12][13][14][15]. light can be used as a reference value for removing signal noise.…”

“…Distributed fiber optic sensors can be divided into permanent and short-duration monitoring according to the monitoring period. As shown in Figure 4, the installation locations of fiber optics are generally the inner wall of the oil pipe, the outer wall of the oil pipe and the outer wall of the casing [12]. The advantages, disadvantages and content of monitoring events are summarized in Table 1, according to the different installation locations of optical fibers as elaborated by Jose (2008) [18], Shoaibi (2016) [19], Mohammad (2019) [12] and Soroush (2022) [20].…”

A Survey on Distributed Fibre Optic Sensor Data Modelling Techniques and Machine Learning Algorithms for Multiphase Fluid Flow Estimation

“…Another flow-loop experiment and simulation model was presented by Soroush et al [ 90 ]. The work focused on analysing the potential of fibre optics technology to perform inferential multi-phase flow measurement.…”

“…Statistical analysis and SAGD modelling [90] 2019 Flow-loop experiment and simulation model Designing and commissioning an advanced multi-phase flow injection experiment.…”