Next generation intelligent completions for multi-stacked brownfield in Malaysia

Abstract

Multi-stacked brownfield in Malaysia is known to have zonal contrast reservoir pressure and water cut. Commingled production without any flow control such as conventional on-off sliding sleeve will induce cross flow of production from a high pressure reservoir to lower pressure reservoir which disables optimum oil production. Having high zonal water cut contrast will cause early or excessive water production translates to deferred oil production. To pro-actively prevent these occurrences, adaptation of intelligent completion components such as Permanent Downhole Gauge (PDG) and surface-controlled Flow Control Valve (FCV) can be used. Downhole FCV choke is designed to cater for the dynamic changes of reservoir properties predicted over well life. In order to standardize the FCV choke sizing by well or by campaign, the choke sizing will be averaged to fit for all layers which is not the ultimate optimized design for maximum oil production. Latest in market today, electrical driven infinite position FCV is the solution to conventional hydraulic actuated FCV. Having infinite position enables optimized choke sizing for all reservoir layers and flexible to tackle uncertainties and dynamic changes of reservoir properties over time which enables the ultimate optimum oil production and water cut reduction. Besides choke sizing, deployment method and operating method also contribute to installation and operating efficiency. Conventional multi-position FCVs in market today are either fully hydraulic operated or electro-hydraulic operated which require hydraulic pump units at surface to enable pressuring up hydraulic control lines to change the position of FCV. It is also time consuming during deployment due to the requirement of electrical splicing, hydraulic splicing and FCV actuation sequence. Infinite position FCV is electrically operated using single downhole cable that can be multi-dropped to more than 25 FCV which reduces deployment time. With WellWatcher Advisor software that provides real time optimization features, operating efficiency is improved significantly with infinite position FCV as compared to conventional multi-position FCV and on-off sliding sleeve.