Technical Articles

Cost-Effective Life-Cycle Profile Control Completion System for Horizontal and Multilateral Wells

A new cost effective life-cycle profile control each other and can be selectively produced, shut-off or stimulated. The need for CT interventions for production logging and water shut-offs is removed. The water shut-off process offered by this technology is reversible.

As fields age and produced water oil ratio increase, surveillance and profile control in the multilateral wells drilled in PDO have become a major challenge. These wells are TAML level 2 multilaterals. Production from two to nine barefoot lateral legs is commingled and artificially lifted by electrical submersible pumps (ESP). ESPs prevent through tubing access to the laterals. Installation of a Y-tool allows for wireline (WL) or coiled tubing (CT) deployed logging and some remedial CT intervention. Well and reservoir management challenges arise from completion design limitations such as barefoot completion, commingled production, the presence of ESPs, access to the TD of the backbone and inability to selectively re-enter the laterals.

New minimum-cost zonal isolation and downhole control technologies provide an opportunity to retrofit TAML level 2 multilateral wells for well and reservoir management purposes. Swelling elastomers in the form of the expandable zonal inflow profiler (EZIP) tool allows segmentation of wellbore section into a discrete number of management intervals. Interval control valves provide the capability to shut-off water or gas.

This paper describes the design and application of remotely operated selective EZIP completion technology (SECTOR) in TAML Level 2 multilateral wells in the carbonate reservoirs of Qarn Alam Asset of PDO. With SECTOR, existing TAML Level 2 multilateral oil producers are converted to TAML-5 multilateral wells. The lateral legs are isolated from each other and can be selectively produced, shut-off or stimulated. The need for CT interventions for production logging and water shut-offs is removed. The water shut-off process offered by this technology is reversible.

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