An Effective Use of New Generation Adaptive Completion for Successful Water Shut-Off in Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs

Abstract

Reducing water production for a horizontally completed well in a fractured carbonate reservoir is one of the dreams of a production engineer. Many technologies are being used worldwide for water shut-off to keep the water inside the reservoir and produce oil with limited success, including isolating the wellbore using inflatable packer and dumping cement; either above the packer or by isolating the bottom section with cement, chemical water shut-off by isolating the matrix and wellbore, etc. A new innovative technology was developed lately by producing the horizontal well in compartments using an equalizer completion consisting of inflow control devices (ICDs) and isolating them through openhole packers and constrictors. This helps to eliminate the imbalanced production in the wellbore avoiding early water breakthrough. Currently, two kinds of ICDs are used, passive and adaptive. The passive ICDs are always opened to production. In cases where specific ICDs start to contribute undesired water production over time, water shut-off of the length below the ICDs had to be performed; leaving much of the oil behind. In cases where the water production is from the heel or in the middle compartment with high oil production from the bottom, the options are very limited. A new generation of adaptive ICDs has lately been installed in the openhole horizontal producers, which can be selectively closed/opened by a setting tool to control the water production. Using this type of completion, the oil production has been substantially increased with a consequent decrease in water production. Selecting the right array production logging tool (APLT) to identify which ICD is contributing to water production is the main contributor to success. Considering the fact that this kind of completion increases fluids velocities, turbulence and enhance emulsion creation, an APLT that consists of capacitance sensors helps to overcome these challenges and increase the rate of success selection of ICDs to be closed. To operate the adaptive ICDs, either a wireline tractor with a modular anchor and shifting tool or coil tubing with a shifting tool can be used to open/close the ICDs. The opening/closing of ICDs can be clearly monitored in real time and confirmed due to changes in the load when the shifting tool engages with the profile of the active ICDs. With the signature from the log, the position of the ICD sleeve can be confirmed — whether opened or closed and there is no need to have additional production logging runs to confirm the position of the sleeve, which can be confirmed with surface flow rates with a reduction in water cut This paper details the design and advantages of the new generation of adaptive ICDs in horizontal wells, designing the APLT program to investigate the completion performance and how the shifting tool is being effectively used for selective operation of the ICDs.