Design and Optimization of Orifice based Flow Control Devices in Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage: A Case Study

Author(s):  
Mohammad Kyanpour ◽  
Zhangxin Chen
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hardcastle ◽  
Ryan Holmes ◽  
Frank Abbott ◽  
Jesse Stevenson ◽  
Aubrey Tuttle

Abstract Connacher Oil and Gas has deployed Flow Control Devices (FCDs)on an infill well liner as part of a Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) exploitation strategy. Infill wells are horizontal wells drilled in between offsetting SAGD well pairs in order to access bypassed pay and accelerate recovery. These wells can have huge variability in productivity, based on several factors: variable initial temperature due to variable steam chamber development and initial mobility variable injectivity from day one limiting steam circulation and stimulation significant hot spots during production that limit drawdown of the well and oil productivity FCDs have shown great value in several SAGD schemes and are becoming common throughout SAGD applications to manage similar challenges in SAGD pairs, but their application in infill wells is less prevalent and presents a novel challenge to design and evaluate performance. This case study will examine the theory, operation, and early field results of this field trial. Density-based FCDs designed for thermal operations were selected to minimize the impact of viscous fluids commonly encountered early in cold infill well production. The design also limited steam outflow during the stimulation phase, where steam is injected in order to initiate production of the well. Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) data, pressures and rates are utilized to analyze the impact of the FCDs towards conformance of the well in the early life. The value of FCDs has led to further piloting of this technology in a second group of nine infill wells, where further value is to be extracted using slimmer wellbores.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 3237
Author(s):  
Anas Sidahmed ◽  
Siavash Nejadi ◽  
Alireza Nouri

In McMurray Formation, steam assisted gravity drainage is used as the primary in-situ recovery technique to recover oil sands. Different geological reservoir settings and long horizontal wells impose limitations and operational challenges on the implementation of steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). The dual-string tubing system is the conventional completion scheme in SAGD. In complex reservoirs where dual-string completion cannot improve the operation performance, operators have adopted flow control devices (FCDs) to improve project economics. FCDs secure more injection/production points along the horizontal sections of the SAGD well pairs, hence, they maximize ultimate bitumen recovery and minimize cumulative steam-oil ratio (cSOR). This paper will focus on the optimization of outflow control devices (OCDs) in SAGD reservoirs with horizontal wellbore undulations. We present the detailed optimization workflow and show the optimization results for various scenarios with well pair trajectory undulation. Comparing the results of the optimized OCDs case with a dual-string case of the same SAGD model shows improvements in steam distribution, steam chamber growth, bitumen production, and net present value (NPV).


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