Design and Application Evaluation of Revolutionary Inflow Control Devices Enhanced Bitumen Recovery and Thermal Efficiency in SAGD Process

Abstract

Non-uniform steam chamber caused by reservoir heterogeneity, shale interlayer, local mobile water, undulating well trajectories and improper operation, etc., severely restricts oil sands SAGD performance. Inflow control devices (ICD) achieved great success in controlling conventional water or gas coning. Inspired by this, liner and then retrofitting tubing deployed ICD have been tested since 2009 and soared in recent years. Therefore, this paper made a systematic review of ICD design, operation principle and application evaluation. Different types of ICD applications in dozens of Canadian oil sands projects were comparatively investigated including operating principle, adaptability analysis, liner-deployed or tubing-deployed ICD, early-to-medium SAGD performance. Then a numerical simulation method incorporated the relationship of pressure drop versus mass rate at different conditions and pressure degradation due to erosion impacts is presented. The feasibility analysis of ICD deployed on injector or producer was further evaluated by numerical simulations. Besides, a set of ICD optimization design method is provided including the principles of well selection, reasonable ICD number along horizontal well section, and optimum operating conditions, etc. Revolutionary ICD technology has become an effective way of greatly improving SAGD performance in recent years. According to the statistical data, most ICD are deployed on producers rather than injectors, which is also explained by numerical simulations of technical feasibility evaluation. In order to deal with uneven steam chamber growth, the number of tubing deployed ICD dramatically increases in recent years. The proportion of liner and tubing deployed ICD is 58% and 42%, respectively. However, there are big differences in SAGD performance of different ICD wells. Some ICD wells is worse in SAGD performance and even damaged by sand production. Based on absorbing the knowledge of field application, the behavior of different types of ICD was compared to guide the selection. Then the workflow of ICD optimization design method was provided by calculating conformance and allocated liquid volume according to the relationship of pressure drop versus mass rate. The operation principle is suggested to facilitate lower subcool but zero subcool not allowed in long term due to sand production risk. On the basis of reasonable well selection, it can easily improve conformance by above 15% and oil production by over 50%. Inspired by this, ICD also applied to several multilateral SAGD well pairs to balance steam or liquid distribution along horizontal wellbore. This paper first systematically provides various types of ICD behavior, screening criteria, design practices, operation principle and application evaluation in SAGD process. These findings are very useful for ICD design and enhancing both oil recovery and thermal efficiency in heavy oil or bitumen production.