Smart Hybrid Technology for Water Injector Wells: Installation, Commissioning and Data Interpretation Challenges - Case Study from a Middle Eastern Field

Abstract

Effective reservoir management is critical to the success of water flood developments. Continuous monitoring of downhole parameters such as pressure, temperature and flow profile in water injector wells is vital in order to optimize the water-flood sweep efficiency and to avoid early water breakthrough in nearby oil producer wells. The target field has three stacked tight carbonate reservoirs with low reservoir energy and as such is being developed with water injection scheme from day one. As such, effective monitoring of downhole injection parameters is important from an early stage. A common industry practice to monitor these parameters is to install Permanent Downhole Gauge (PDHG) and Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) system. Recently, a new smart Hybrid Technology has been developed to measure the downhole data at surface. This paper describes the successful application of this hybrid technology in a green onshore oil field development. Details are presented about the well bore segmentation design of the DTS system, the hybrid cable installation and the operational challenges with the hookup to the wellhead control system. The paper also presents the data acquired during commissioning job, and interpretation of the temperature data which was used to generate the injection profile along the wellbore. Finally, a strategy for future implementation of the DTS system is discussed. Overall, this technology showcases the application of the smart hybrid completion for real-time monitoring of the water injection profile, including the pressure and rates along with injection volume per segment in the horizontal section. Real-time data from the hybrid technology has been integrated to digital oil field implementation to enhance the real time decision making to optimize the injection rates and to allow the operator to implement the decisions without any delay. This technology optimized the cables requirement and maximized the utilization of cable for multi-application environment to support acquiring Pressure, DTS and DAS data to generate real time injection profile.