Abstract
Barefoot horizontal completion is the main technology that applied in the N oilfield Middle East, and several production problems have occurred at the barefoot horizontal wells in the past few years, for example, the water coning, the gas breakthrough, and the uneven production profile, which could be resulted from the edge-bottom water, gas cap or the adjoining injection wells. These production problems will result in a low sweep efficiency and low final oil recovery. In the meantime, poor design of lower completion configuration would not only lead to a lower final oil recovery but also cost a lot in the installation and operation.
Therefore, the fit-for-purpose lower completion technologies and well-designed lower completion configuration need to be studied for the purpose of high sweep efficiency and high net profit value. In this work, the production wells were classified into several categories according to the seriousness and reasons of the production problem. Then, the detailed factor analysis of water coning and gas breakthrough is carried out from the numerical simulations based on the liquid/gas flow streamline, which can find out the water coning issue and the gas breakthrough issue whether are caused by the injection wells or the edge-bottom water. At last, the well-designed lower completion configuration study for the production well and injection well is conducted in the dynamic model simulations. By applying the optimized lower completion configurations and deploying the tools accurately based on reservoir property and production performance, the highest oil recovery and net profit values can be achieved in the oilfield development.
This work can give guidance to the problem classification of production wells, and establish a more accurate optimization method of designing the lower completion to better develop the oilfield.
