Smart Well Technologies Implementation in PDO for Production & Reservoir Management & Control

Abstract

Abstract PDO currently operates more than 4000 wells in over 100 fields. The fields are diverse in terms of their reservoir, drive and development strategies. Despite this diversity, there are strong common drivers for smart wells/fields. Many fields are artificially lifted (beam pumps in S. Oman, gas lift in N. and central Oman, increasingly ESPs in all areas) with SCADA systems already in place. There is a progressive drive towards centralised, automated production facilities for reasons of safety. Reservoir depths and low drilling costs support relatively dense economic well spacing where it is technically feasible to connect large amounts of reservoir to a single wellbore; this saves development CAPEX but makes maintaining effective control of the reservoir more difficult. Smart wells is an umbrella term referring to the systemic integration of emerging down-hole measurement, communication, control and processing technologies in well and asset design. As an integrated technology bundle, they have the potential fundamentally to change the E&P industry. A range of smart technology trials have been conducted and/or are planned, including down-hole monitoring, measurement, controlling and artificial lift optimisation. PDO is applying many smart well technologies to monitor, measure, control and optimise production from multi lateral wells. This paper focuses on following applied technologies;Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) to monitor water and steam flooding wells.Down-Hole 2-Phase Metering in ESP and BP wells to measure water cut of dual lateral wells.Digital Hydraulic Control Valves to control production of a multilateral well. The paper is intended to cover the above applied smart well technology trials, share the experience with respect to their outcomes (success and failures) during the execution. It also provides an assessment of the values of these technologies to PDO. Introduction PDO currently operates more than 4000 wells in more than 100 fields spread over a very large geographical area. Most of these fields are matured and have reached their seconday development phase. Therefore it becomes very important and critical to have a reservoir and production monitoring and management in order to optimize production of the wells. Most of these wells are also artificially lifted which needs continuous monitoring to keep them running smoothly to increase uptime of the wells. Hence, PDO has embarked on a program to implement smart well technologies across most of the fields. The main objectives of these technologies were to enhance production and improve reservoir management by having better control, monitoring and optimization of the wells. Smart Well Technology Strategy and Implementation A Smart Well technology strategy for PDO has been set in 2000 in which value adding opportunities have been identified. It is realized that the technology targets that can be resolved with the application of Smart Well technology are:Water/steamflood front monitoring to accelerate recovery and reduce lost UR by successful fracture shut-off and improved sweep efficiency.Multiphase metering of multilateral and extended horizontal wells to monitor water inflow and plan intervention activities.Selective zonal and multilateral leg control to reduce well intervention costs and improve reservoir management so increasing UR and accelerating recoverySelf optimising artificial lift to increase UR by accelerating oil production and to increase run life thus reducing deferment and reduce OPEX.Fracture orientation determination to make informed decisions on future in-fill wells and save DRILLEX, increase UR and accelerate recovery through optimised drainage and injection patterns