PTA Modelling Approach to Accurately Assess Formation Damage Associated to Wells Completed with Inflow Control Devices

Abstract

Abstract Inflow control devices (ICDs) help enforce uniform flow profiles, in horizontal wells drilled across reservoir sections with variable permeability distributions. ICD completions are installed along the dedicated horizontal sections, inducing an additional completion related skin into the total skin factor due to the pressure drop across these tools. A numerical modelling approach in this paper will quantify the ICD related skin factor to confirm the existence of any formation damage for remedial actions if necessary. Recent software technologies have overcome this hurdle of determining each component of the apparent damage skin (the formation damage skin and the completion skin related to ICDs) by incorporating key design parameters (i.e., ICD strength or nozzle size) of these devices into the numerical modelling. This paper will present examples where a numerical approach has been implemented to estimate the formation damage skin factor from pressure build-up tests conducted in wells equipped with ICDs. In addition, the new numerical ICD modelling approach has enabled the determination of the contributing ICD completion compartments or targeted sections, which results in accurate effective well length assessment. This paper will show examples of modelling build up test data with conventional analytical solutions, in which well test analysts can only obtain the apparent damage skin, and therefore will not be able to de-couple each skin component (the true formation damage skin and the completion skin related to ICDs), compared to the advantages of a higher resolution numerical modeling approach which captures the complex well geometries incorporating the ICD design parameters (i.e., ICD strength or nozzle size) to quantify the true formation damage beyond these tools. This numerical modelling approach will ultimately lead to an accurate estimation of the formation damage skin factor beyond these completions and will also enable the estimation of the contributing ICD completion compartment or targeted section along the horizontal wellbore. With the ICD numerical modeling capability in complex well geometries allowing the assessment of the true formation damage, well testing analysts will confidently take reliable actions regarding remedial stimulation jobs by knowing the magnitude of the formation damage skin and will also be able to assess the contributing ICD completion compartments or targeted segments along the drilled wellbore for a higher resolution of the effective well length estimation from the pressure transient analysis perspective.