Annular Flow Modelling and Advanced Well Completions Design Optimisation in Oil Rim Reservoirs

Abstract

The inflow control device completion has proved to be an effective solution to mitigate water and gas breakthrough and coning problems. One of the major parameters affecting the ICD completion's performance is annular flow, the flow of the fluid in the space between the base pipe and the sand-face. The importance of annular flow on the ICD completion was addressed by many researchers. However, there was lack of an analytical annular flow model to integrate the effect of all parameters important contributing to the annular flow. In this study a comprehensive annular flow modelling and ICD completion design using a reservoir simulation model are presented.

The results of the study show that ICD completions mitigate the heel-toe effect which is resulted from an improper well configuration. A sufficiently high strength ICD completion reduces the dependency of the annulus pressure to the flowing pressure along tubing itself i.e. reducing the heel-toe effect. This results in minimising the annular flow even with no need of annular flow isolation (AFI) tools like swellable packers. AFI installation would be less necessary in homogenous reservoirs when an appropriate ICD completion design, which could be determined by the analytical annular flow equations, was used.