A Proposed Method for Simulation of Rate-Controlled Production Valves for Reduced Water Cut
Authors: Moradi Ali , Moldestad Britt M. E. 
Published: April 2021

In recent years, the advancement of horizontal-well technology has played a major role in making oil production economically feasible from many reservoirs. One of the major problems that can reduce the efficiency of using horizontal wells is gas and water coning caused by the heel-toe effect and heterogeneity along the well. To tackle this problem, Equinor’s autonomous inflow-control device (ICD) (AICD), known as rate-controlled production (RCP) valves, is widely used today. RCP valves can effectively delay the early water breakthrough and partially choke back water autonomously after water breakthrough. To fulfill a suitable design of a long horizontal well with the RCP completion, a detailed understanding of multiphase-flow behavior from the reservoir pore to the wellbore and production tubing is needed. Coupling a dynamic multiphase-flow simulator such as the OLGASM (Schlumberger Limited, Sugar Land, Texas, USA) simulator with the near-wellbore reservoir module such as the OLGA ROCX module provides a robust tool for achieving this purpose. However, there is no predefined option in the OLGA simulator for implementing the autonomous behavior of the RCP valves directly. Therefore, creating a model of oil production by considering well completion with the RCP valves in the OLGA simulator is challenging. In the previous works, this has been performed by using the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) Controller option in the OLGA simulator, which controls the opening of an equivalent orifice valve according to the fixed value of the water cut. However, because of the performance of the PID Controller using a fixed setpoint and the difficulties in properly tuning the PID Controller, choosing this option leads to a large degree of inaccuracy in the simulation models. In this paper, by proposing a novel method with a developed mathematical model and a control function for the RCP valves, the autonomous behavior of these valves is implemented in the OLGA simulator. In this new approach, the control signals are calculated using the variation of water cut and introduced to the OLGA simulator through the Table Controller option instead of the PID Controller. The presented approach in this paper can be used for the simulation of water-cut (or gas/oil-ratio) reduction potential of all RCP-type AICDs in reservoirs with different characteristics. However, to explain the procedure of this approach in detail, the near-well oil production from Well 16/2-D-12 in the Johan Sverdrup Field (JSF) considering RCP completion is modeled as a case study. In this study, the simulation model is developed using one of the commonly used types of RCP valves called the TR7 RCP valve. Version 2016.1.1 of the OLGA simulator/ROCX module is used (Schlumberger 2016). According to the simulation results, compared with using ICDs, by the completion of Well 16/2-D-12 with RCPs, the water cut, water-flow rate, and accumulated water production can be reduced by 2.9, 13.3, and 12.1%, respectively, after 750 days. The results also showed that by using the proposed approach, the autonomous behavior of the RCP valves according to the water-cut variations can be appropriately implemented in the OLGA simulator. This can help engineers and researchers to achieve a better design of a long horizontal well using the RCP completion. Consequently, using this approach can be beneficial for improving technology, optimizing production, minimizing risk, and reducing costs in oil recovery.