New Concept of Adding Inflow Points Across ICDs in Horizontal Wells to Improve Oil Production Performance

Abstract

This paper details a new rigless technique combining water shut-off operation and adding more inflow ports (perfs) in horizontal oil wells completed with inflow control devices (ICDs). The water production is reduced by mechanical isolation of the ICDs producing high water, while well productivity after water shut-off is enhanced by adding ports across dry oil (0% water cut) and/or excellent oil potential compartments. The paper provides workflow for identifying water shut-off compartments and methods to create new ports. Electric-line conveyed tubing sidewall milling tool was found the safe-solution to add ports along non-cemented blank pipe of the ICD completion. Once an ICD well is identified for a water shut-off, production logging is conducted to identify the production phase and water cut across all ICDs compartments. Well modeling using PLT log results is constructed to evaluate shutting off the identified high water cut compartments as well as evaluate oil production by the remaining ICDs and gains by adding ports. Depending on water entries locations, water shut-off in ICD wells can be performed using bridge plugs or expandable clads. As the well productivity is reduced by isolating some compartments for water shut-off, adding ports in the remaining compartments releases ICD flow restrictions and enhance the productivity. These ports are orders of magnitude bigger than the ICDs and allow unrestricted flow from the excellent oil potential compartments. This integrated process was successfully implemented in two horizontal oil wells with ICDs. Same intervention operations were conducted for both wells, watered out compartments were isolated and new ports were machined along compartments identified for excellent oil potential. The water cut has dropped by (27-36%) with sustained oil gains more than twice compared to pre-job performance. Such rigless combined operations are proven to be an effective solution to improve well performance at least cost. Setting plug minimizes water production, while adding inflow ports increase oil production rate. A review of the published literature indicates that this is the first instance of this integrated solution. While there are several papers about the benefits of ICDs, there are no papers covering the processes presented in this paper. The processes and methods presented could be a reference for rigless well intervention for ICD wells to reduce water production while increasing oil production rate.