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Abstract
For thin oil-rim reservoirs, well placement, well type, well path and the completion methods shall be
evaluated with close integration of key reservoir and production engineering considerations. This involves
maximizing reservoir fluid contact and drainage, optimizing the well productivity, and optimizing well
life-cycle production profile along the wellbore. Field implementation cases in Malaysia have been shown
that this integrated approach to design and drill horizontal wells can significantly minimize the well count,
enhance the well performance, and improve the ultimate recovery per well in thin oil-rim reservoirs with
varying reservoir complexity and uncertainties.
45 horizontal wells were progressively drilled and all completed with ICD in a relatively flat thin
oil-rim reservoir offshore in peninsular Malaysia. In this successful oil development, well path between
the GOC and OWC was optimized to delay the water breakthrough and reduce the decline trend in
different reservoir sectors with varying horizontal well length up to 2,000 m. Good performance of the
ICD was confirmed by PLT surveys and by tracer effluents evaluation with different type of tracers
implemented in various sections of the horizontal well completion.
For a low pressure thinner oil-rim reservoir in offshore Sabah, horizontal wells were drilled with ICV
completed in the gas cap. This smart well design enables having in-situ gas lift operation during the initial
oil production, and progressively changing to the planned gas-cap blow-down operation for maximizing
the overall hydrocarbon recovery. In another oil-rim reservoir, a long horizontal wellbore with ICD design
was completed with dual-strings to further optimize drawdown pressure distribution along the long
wellbore and improve oil drainage and oil recovery.
This paper is to share not only the lessons learnt in drilling and completion of these smart horizontal
wells but also illustrate the impact of these smart well designs in adding values to the field development
projects.
Introduction
Development of oil-rim reservoirs in Malaysia has been progressively improved over the recent years
through a series of reservoir engineering studies and successful field implementations. Although, typical
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Figure 1Fluid saturation map of a sand distribution in a vast oil-rim reservoir in Peninsular Malaysia. Consist of various stratigraphic and
heterogeneous structural traps, this sand estimated to have >800 MMSTB initial oil in place spread over 7 sectors with 5 distinctive gas-caps
overlying a huge regional aquifer.
Figure 2Subtle balance of driving forces in oil-rim reservoirs is critical to keep the oil-rim in original place.
oil-rim reservoirs are characteristically wedged between a gas-cap and underlying aquifer, they can be
structurally very complicated with faults and flow boundaries, having varying dips and saddles. Oil-rim
reservoirs of various sand thickness can also be stacked and compartmentalized. Aquifer support varied
from reservoir sector to sector, resulting in uneven pressure depletion and fluid contact change. Figure 1
showed such a vast oil-rim reservoir in Peninsular Malaysia.
Early days oil-rim reservoir field development strategy was mainly by drilling a large number of
vertical or low angle wells. Wells are completed with multiple strings in order to produce separately from
various different but stacked sands with significantly large pressure difference. Well-life can be short
producing at high water-cut and high GOR due to wells having partial penetration operated at high
pressure drawdown. For such a well development strategy, idle well rate increase drastically. Currently,
active wells in some key oil-rim reservoirs are far less than 50%. Field oil recovery remains low even after
25 years of continuous production.
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Figure 3Subtle balance of forces kept this oil-rim in place for 10 years with minimum pressure decline and more even fluid withdraw across the
reservoir.
Figure 4 Model Simulation showing initial oil in place in a sector of the oil-rim reservoir with vertical well penetrations (producers in green and
gas injectors in red).
Producing gas reinjection, controlled pressure drawdown at wells in different reservoir sectors based on
varying aquifer strength and sand layer dip angle, the placement, spacing and completion of the wells
could all affect the balance of these drives (Ref. 1). The art of this balance is to keep the oil rim in place
avoiding drastic migration of the oil rim having a good vertical displacement conformance. Subtle balance
of forces can keep the oil-rim in place for long years with minimum pressure decline and more even fluid
withdraw across the reservoir (Figure 3).
A good example of drive mechanism imbalance which caused a serious oil rim migration is subsequently presented in Figure 4 and 5. Due to the urgent need for gas sales, some of the produced gas in
the above mentioned huge oil-rim reservoir was diverted to market. This action disrupted the stability of
the oil rim and caused a significant migration of the oil rim towards the gas cap (Ref. 2). Significant oil
was trapped and lost in the gas cap due to displacement of oil rim into the gas cap (Figure 5). Most
critically, uncertain oil rim vertical and lateral migration affected the existing well production and greatly
increased the risk of infill well drilling programs. Recent post drilling review showed new infill wells
drilling success ratio dropped to less than 30%. Wells encountered much less oil reserve than expected.
In some sectors, current oil water contact was found to be higher than the original gas oil contact (Figure
6).
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Figure 5Oil migration towards the gas cap due to imbalance of gas reinjection with the aquifer support and fluid production in the above mentioned
oil-rim reservoir sector.
Figure 6 Significant oil rim upward movement clearly demonstrated by a recent post drilling review. Current oil water contact is higher than the
original gas oil contact.
Even though oil-rim reservoir could have a huge underlying aquifer, the bottom water support may not
be adequate in some oil-rim reservoir sectors. Some oil-rim reservoirs in Malaysia have observed a
significant pressure decline. Water and gas injection shall also be implemented if not for the whole field
but selectively in some regions in order to keep the force balance, minimize the oil migration, and improve
oil recovery (Ref. 3, 4 and 5). Injection strategies and method include periphery or fencing, updip water
injection and down dip gas injection (Ref. 3, 4).
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Figure 7Convention well placement based on mobile oil saturation but having vertical or low angle wells to penetrate several oil-rim reservoir sand
layers. Complex multiple completions were implemented due to uneven reservoir layer pressure.
above mentioned oil-rim reservoir). This also required a large number of offshore platform structures and
support facilities.
Vertical wells due to limited oil contact, generally have low productivity and require a relatively large
drawdown pressure (500 to 1,000 Psi). They could be quickly producing at high water-cut and high gas-oil
ratio coning bottom water and gas from the gas-cap. Reservoir energies were rapidly drained. Well lives
are short and only 15 strings are currently active. In addition, vertical wells affected limited drainage
volume. Significant bypass oil remained even at very large number of well count. After 25 years of
production, the overall oil recovery remained low (~35%).
In recent years, the drive for drilling horizontal or high angle wells, particularly in offshore oil-rim
reservoirs, yielded much better results. Figure 8 shows a good example of horizontal wells radially drilled
from a single platform. Horizontal well lengths varied (800 m to 1,800 m) depending on the drainage and
sand boundaries. With good reservoir sand contact, the wells fetched good productivity and required low
drawdown ( 100 Psi) to produce. Production can be further enhanced by drilling horizontal wellbores
having an optimum distance from oil water contact. Figure 8 also shows the art of drilling properly the
wells in a reservoir sector having 11 m oil rim thickness and controlling the wellbore distance 5 m or 6
m from the oil water contact. Post drilling production data showed the optimum 6 m as a benchmark. At
6 m, the oil production was significantly improved due to the delay of the bottom water breakthrough (see
production history charts on Figure 8),
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Figure 8 Horizontal well placement in a thin oil-rim reservoir drilled from a single platform. Optimum wellbore distance from oil water contact
was evaluated by comparing the actual performance of the two adjacent horizontal wells drilled 5 m and 6 m from oil water contact. Oil rate and
water oil ratio behavior were clearly different.
Figure 9 1,590 m, ICD completed horizontal well A PLT survey results. Well was flowing at 1,243 BOPD and 217 Scf/Bbl GOR from this low API
gravity oil-rim reservoir. Water-cut was 71% but mainly from the heel (leak?).
A was completed with 157 ICDs on 1,590 m of wellbore length. Figure 9 shows separately, plots of 3
phase fluid cumulative inflows from toe to heel. Total liquid cumulative inflow can be seen as close to
linear, indicative of an even distribution of the pressure drawdown along this relatively non-heterogeneous
drilling trajectory. The well was flowing at 1,243 BOPD with 217 Scf/Bbl GOR. Water-cut was 71% but
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Figure 10 1,820 m ICD completed horizontal well B PLT survey results. Well was flowing at 2,737 BOPD and 187 Scf/Bbl GOR. > 20% production
from toe section. Water-cut was 13%.
mainly from the end of the heel. Almost no water production from toe portions. Well was also completed
with SAS sand control screen with swallable packers. A leak packer at the heel could be the cause of high
water production.
Function of ICD can be further confirmed by inspecting the PLT survey results from the other high
production well (Figure 10). With 1,820 m measured horizontal length, Well B was completed with 182
ICDs. Well was flowing at 2,737 BOPD with 187 Scf/Bbl GOR. Water-cut was 13%, but from toe. The
inflow profile was again close to linear particularly at the first half the wellbore near heel. There are sign
of slow water unloading at the toe. However, 20% of the oil production was from the toe. ICD design of
this well can be adequate to ensure contribution from toe.
With confidence generated by successful smart horizontal well drilling, the field is progressively
drilling phase-wise, increasing well count from 22 to 33 and to 41 wells. Figure 11 shows increasing well
density over the years following the strategy of radial well spacing design, optimized by a well count
optimization model simulation study. Further drilling such radial wells may not be economical feasible
due to low yield of ultimate recovery per well if additional wells are fetching less than 0.22 MMSTB per
well.
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Figure 11Progressive development of a thin oil-rim reservoir by phase-wise smart horizontal wells drilling and completion. Well count vs. Ultimate
Recovery (EUR) shows optimum 41 wells as limited by economics.
Figure 12A Multi-Segmented Well (MSW) model coupled with a dynamic simulation model for evaluation of smart completion horizontal wells.
After Kabir, A., and Sanchez, G., Accurate Inflow Profile Prediction of Horizontal Wells through Coupling of a Reservoir and a Wellbore
Simulator, SPE 119095 (2009)
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Figure 13Results of a MSW coupling model study showing a gain of up to 16% in recovery at well level (left) and a gain of 6% recovery at field
level (right).
Figure 14 Horizontal well drainage depends on pressure drawdown profile along the horizontal wellbore length. Well length and well spacing shall
be optimized to minimize the well count and maximize the field recovery.
Swc
Sor
Recovery Factor
0.7345
0.6072
0.3972
0.3175
0.2356
0.2042
0.1046
0.164
0.1339
0.1245
0.117
0.1014
0.0955
0.0842
20.02
34.51
41.55
43.38
45.41
46.08
47.44
10
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Figure 15Inflow profile vs. horizontal length optimization using a fine grid MSW model (Ref. 11)
evaluate the horizontal well production performance with and without ICD installation and operation.
Figure 13 shows, for a studied well and for the whole field, comparison of recovery gains with and
without ICDs. At well level, depending on the reservoir quality and condition, the gain in oil recovery
can be up to 16%. At the field level, the overall recovery factor can be 6%.
Nothing in our endeavors on field development can escape the scrutiny of cost and value balance (Ref.
8). The additional cost incurred by having smart flow control devices shall be checked against the
additional reserve gained. A key economic indicator for well construction is the Well Development Cost
(WDC) as the ratio between cost and value and expressed in the unit of $/Bbl. As a rule of thumb, WDC
far less than 10 $/Bbl shall be very profitable. The WDC can directly correlate with the Net Present Value
(NPV) for a respective field development area.
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11
Figure 16 Example of horizontal well length optimization based on NPV (Ref. 12)
permeability end points. For a 15 m thick isotropic formation with equal horizontal and vertical
permeabilities, the theoretical optimum well spacing can be about 15 m and the corresponding maximum
oil recovery factor can be around 45% (Table 1).
The predicted field recovery factor is 27% for the above mentioned field with 41 ICD completed
horizontal wells, and the well spacing was about 200 m. This implied that more work can be done to
improve the oil recovery in this 15 m thick oil-rim reservoir. Horizontal length can be further optimized
by evaluation of inflow rate profile segment by segment using a MSW model (Ref. 11). It can be best
optimized by evaluation of NPV vs. the horizontal length (Ref. 12). Figure 15 and 16 illustrated for
examples, the results which can be generated by continuous studies in this field using the established
MSW model coupling with the dynamic model.
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Figure 17Horizontal well drilling to produce from both sides of a saddle region in a thin oil-rim reservoir.
Figure 18 Dual string horizontal well ICD completion design implemented for producing separately from 2 segments of the reservoir.
Figure 19 Value comparison between completion options and the selection of dual horizontal strings with ICD for implementation.
showed that optimized ICD completion, providing the necessary selective choking, could significantly
reduce this risk. Feasibility of adding active inflow control valves (ICV) was also studied for selectively
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Figure 20 Stabilized initial production from a dual string smart completion horizontal wells. Similar oil rates and trends observed from both long
and short strings.
choking excessive water and gas inflow during the life-cycle production. Nevertheless, this approach was
not adopted due to lowering of the smart horizontal well value.
Two horizontal wells in this field were completed by this dual string ICD wellbore design. Figure 20
shows a stabilized production 4 months after the start-up. Both long and short strings were producing at
similar oil rates and having similar trends. No significant water production was observed year to date.
GOR increased slightly above the solution gas ratio particularly from the long string.
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Figure 21ICV controlled gas production from upper sands as the gas-lift gas to aid oil production from oil-rim reservoir. Horizontal wells in oil
rim completed with ICDs.
Figure 22A graphical workflow showing the entire cycle of oil-rim reservoir development from balancing the drive mechanisms to well drainage
and placement selection, to smart completion design, on to evaluation of production performance, and further development of a reservoir
management plan for operating and maintaining the smart wells implemented for effective development of the oil-rim reservoir.
Figure 22 shows a graphical workflow for the entire cycle of oil-rim reservoir development. It started
from balancing the drive mechanisms to well drainage and placement selection, to smart completion
design, on to evaluation of production performance of the smart wells. It further delineated the need for
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development of a reservoir management plan for operating and maintaining the smart wells implemented
for effective and continuous development of the oil-rim reservoirs.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the management of PETRONAS for their permission to publish this paper. Thanks are
also due to all members of the PSC project teams and the service providers for their continuous enthusiasm
and dedication to develop the oil rim reservoirs in Malaysia.
References
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