While horizontal wells enable greater reservoir contact per well, thereby reducing capex, well count, and environmental impact, they present a number of challenges. These include pressure drop from toe to heel, heterogenous rock properties, water or gas coning at the heel, and reservoir uncertainty associated with long intervals.
Belonging to the family of ResFlow™ inflow control devices, ResFlow AICD 2M devices are fitted in basepipes distributed across the sandface to balance inflow from reservoirs with heterogenous mobility while restricting unwanted water and gas. Delaying breakthrough of unwanted fluids and reducing their flow results in higher oil production and decreases the cost and carbon footprint of
water and gas handling.
All SLB ICDs and AICDs are designed with a large drainage flow area, which increases production and reduces erosion. The ability to adjust the AICD at the wellsite brings flexibility and agility to completion design. A drilled well is rarely identical to the predrill plan; by fine-tuning ICD elements at the wellsite, based on LWD logs and supported by dynamic modeling and reservoir simulation, operators can maximize both oil production and recovery.
A well with high heterogeneity and elevated risk of water or gas production requires extremely controlled flow. In such cases, a piloted floating disc AICD is more suitable than a passive ICD. The floating disc is controlled by the flow in the pilot line. The AICD uses the disc to shut off the production flow path when water or gas is detected and reopens it if the unwanted fluid recedes (e.g., after initial flowback). This true on-off functionality leads to better completion performance and autonomously reduces water and gas production up to 90% at the sandface. The pilot line uses the turbulent flow of water for self-cleaning (preventing scale buildup). The ResFlow AICD 2M device has proven in its pilot well for an operator in Oman to improve oil production by 500% and reduce water production significantly compared to offset wells.
The number of production ow paths provided by the ResFlow AICD 2M is configurable, based on the expected ow rates. To avoid overchoking at high water cuts, one or more of these production paths can be configured to remain always open.
Separate optimized devices tuned for gas and or water control are available. Log in to download the specifications which we update as we grow our available options.
Water and gas control in openhole completions
