February 2020 Technical Luncheon – Injection Wells: The New Generation of Outflow Control Devices to Efficiently Control the Injection Fluid Conformance

SPE WA are proud to present the details of our Feb technical luncheon.

About the Presentation

Several injection techniques have been used to sweep oil toward the production wells and maintain reservoir pressure to improve the recovery. However, the history of injection wells applications indicates a significant number of failures either in losing injectivity or in being unable to achieve the desired conformance for the injected fluids.

Several techniques including using outflow control devices (OCDs) have been successful in several applications. However, the devices may not be of great interest if applied in the formations with severe heterogeneities including natural or thermal fractures in both carbonated and sandstone formations. The high contrast in the injectivity of the section with fractures compared to the rest of the well causes delivery of a great portion of the injected water into that thief zone thus creating short-circuit to the nearby producer wells.

A new autonomous device is developed to control the injection fluid into natural/propagated fractures crossing the well thus eliminating the current intervention practices. This paper will present an overview of the product development with flow loop testing and demonstrates its benefit by dynamic reservoir modelling. This presentation also will describe the design consideration of any potential adverse effect of this injection valve such as plugging, reliability and erosion.

Like other flow control valves, this device should be installed in several compartments in the wells. The devices operate as normal outflow control valves initially and then if the injected flowrate flowing through a valve exceeds a designed threshold, the valve will automatically move to another position to choke back the injection of fluid at that specific compartment. This allows the denied fluid to be distributed among the valves installed at neighbouring compartments so the impacts of the thief zone will be eliminated. This performance enables the operators to minimise the impacts of natural fractures on the injected fluid conformance and to control the growth of thermal fractures while reducing the injection cost and improving the reliability of the injection well systems.

The autonomous valve has been qualified and shows its reliability through the robustness, plugging and erosion testing. The accelerated testing has demonstrated 20 years lifetime for the valve design. The flow loop test data along with a dynamic reservoir-well modelling of the flow performance is also presented. The simulation study showed that with a less imposed pressure drop compared to OCDs, the fluid front could be managed much more efficiently to achieve the desired sweep and maximised ultimate recovery.

The first autonomous injection valve that chokes/restricts water into large/propagate fracture is developed. This device removes most of the deficiencies of OCDs and eliminates the requirements of running PLT and the following actions e.g. closing/opening of sliding sleeves. Instead, it provides operators with a tool that enables the optimised completion to deliver optimum water and gas injection techniques autonomously.

About the Speakers – Mojtaba Moradi

Mojtaba Moradi received his BSc and MSc degrees in Iran and his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, UK.

He has more than eight years’ experience as a petroleum engineer. He also taught several petroleum and chemical engineering courses at Heriot-Watt University (UK) and Azad University (Iran).

Prior to Tendeka, he was involved in various projects from unconventional reservoirs, intelligent wells to CO2 storage, CO2-WAG EOR & gas condensate reservoirs

Mojtaba has published more than 20 technical papers.

Students (read below)!!!

SPE WA in conjunction with our sponsor tNavigator (Rock Flow Dynamics), are kindly sponsoring students to attend the monthly technical luncheons. Please fill out an application form, explaining why you are interested in attending the SPE WA technical luncheons. Successful applicants will be notified via email. Note that applications will only be accepted up to one week prior to the event.

Free tickets available for Students. Please apply through your Student Chapter.