OTC-28103-MS

Intelligent Completions Used during Extended Well Test of Exploratory Wells

in Brazil

L. Costa, D. Rodrigues, R. da Silva, I. Souza, and M. A. Fernandes, Halliburton

Copyright 2017, Offshore Technology Conference

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Offshore Technology Conference Brasil held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 24–26 October 2017.

This paper was selected for presentation by an OTC program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of
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Abstract
This paper describes an extended well test (EWT) campaign using intelligent completions in a presalt
reservoir. Brazil is recognized as a promising deepwater province because of large oil discoveries in the
presalt polygon. One such discovery contains an estimated eight billion barrels of recoverable oil and is
considered to be one of the largest fields recently identified. Several challenges and risks are associated with
ensuring economic returns, such as properly constructing wells and extracting value from their lifecycles.
Most presalt fields contain thick carbonate reservoirs with significant variations in vertical permeability
and unknown behavior affecting long-term production. Most of those uncertainties can be reduced using
extended well testing; however, the solution implemented uses multizone completions to perform EWT,
providing a new level of reservoir understanding.
To better understand reservoir behavior during production, several options were analyzed for the first
EWT to help minimize uncertainties concerning the extensive pay zone. Drilling wells provides valuable
rock and formation knowledge; however, this information is not sufficient to simulate formation flow
behavior during the field lifecycle and reduce production uncertainties. In addition, current oil market
conditions imposed another challenge to maximize output during EWT, impacting some well designs and
the campaign strategy. A triple-zone intelligent completion was envisioned as the optimum solution to be
applied for properly understanding how each interval would behave under production or injection.
EWT was performed on two producers and one injector. Based on project requirements, gas and water had
to be reinjected into the reservoir. Additionally, using two producers allowed the operator to maximize oil
output while performing the EWT with production details from each zone rather than the entire well. Both
producers were completed with dual-zone intelligent completions systems because of technical limitations,
while the injector was completed as planned with three zones.
Proper planning, preparation, and experience from other projects contributed to the campaign success
in such a challenging exploratory completion. During preparation, several evaluations and studies were
performed to help ensure the proper technology was selected and the system could withstand the extremely
high flow rates with high scaling potential expected along with other flow assurance concerns.
A future commissioning campaign in this field should allow further evaluation of the applicability of this
concept to other fields, which is promising for reservoir evaluation studies.
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Introduction
Presalt represents an important driver of the oil industry in Brazil because it is responsible for a large
percentage of total oil being produced in the country. In 2010, the discovery of a new and gigantic field
with estimated eight billion barrels increased the importance of presalt polygon for the region, and it was
considered a watershed in terms of the country's economy, intensifying oil industry activities at the time.
The field, located in the Santos Basin, is approximately 140 miles away from the Rio de Janeiro coast.
Viewed as a great opportunity by a national operator, a drilling exploratory campaign was performed
wherein important parameters were obtained in each well; however, the field in general presented
uncertainties in terms of results. To help maximize reservoir understanding and increase recovery
possibilities, it was decided to perform extended well tests in three exploratory wells using downhole
intelligent completion equipment. Wells would be completed using monitoring and flow control devices to
help increase EWT data acquisition levels and consequently allow good analysis to be obtained for various
potential scenarios.

Field Importance
According to the National Agency of Petroleum (ANP), available field resources can vary from 8 to 12
billion barrels, while the production per day can reach up to 1.4 million barrels. With these significant
numbers, field exploration and production became the focus of a main operator in Brazil.
Drilling of the first wells began in 2015. The same year, initial evaluation results confirmed the good oil
productivity and quality (27°API) of these reservoirs (Motta et al. 2015). A precise completion program
would become an essential step to field. Fig. 1 illustrates the field location in the Brazil presalt area.

Figure 1—Field location in Brazil presalt area.

According to initial data obtained during the drilling phase, exploration and production of the field
is expected to extend for at least the next 20 years, and should bring countless benefits to the region's
economy. It is estimated that oil production in the country should double by 2020, primarily because of the
development of producing wells in the field.

Well Testing: An Important Step before Production

Understanding the reservoir is fundamental to improving recovery and production performance. Poor
decisions regarding this knowledge can directly affect the final result. Some of the necessary information to
understanding a reservoir is obtained during drilling and evaluation of wells. However, well testing escalates
reservoir analysis to a greater level in terms of details. The more accurately data is acquired during the
OTC-28103-MS 3

exploratory phase of the field, the better the reservoir models, resulting in optimal completion plans. During
this particular project, the operator decided to perform extended well testing in three exploration wells, an
injector and two producers.
This strategy was successfully implemented by the operator in previous deepwater reservoirs (Celia et al.
2009). The decision to employ extended well testing provided key information for field development and
is now considered essential for similar future projects. The primary difference between those EWTs and
the one discussed in this paper is the use of intelligent completion equipment installed in each well. The
equipment allows the operator to evaluate each zone with detailed data provided in real time.
Because of the complexity of presalt reservoirs where, often, variations in vertical permeability, carbonate
sections, and other challenges are found, (Paulo et al. 2012,) deciding to perform a well test and evaluating
the reservoir for a certain period of time with equipment that can change well parameters can be a wise way
to reach ultimate recovery, particularly in this scenario.

Completion Design and Functionality

The accumulated knowledge acquired so far by the oil companies proved the importance of a proper
completion project to ensure a long term life for the field, avoiding an early depletion and the lowest cost
per BOE produced. Upon completion of the first presalt reservoir, it was clear that implementing the correct
technology in such well types was crucial to obtaining expected results. For the field discussed in this paper,
the operator determined that the use of intelligent completions would be the optimal option to help address
typical severe presalt well conditions, with the benefit of applying the subsequent well testing program.
The three completed wells have an average depth of 18,000 ft, a bottomhole temperature of 90°C, and
approximately 9,000 psi bottomhole pressure.
To help obtain detailed data in each zone of interest, a standard intelligent completion design was defined
for the wells with a minor change from producers to injectors, shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2—Zonal design for (a) injector and (b) producer wells.
4 OTC-28103-MS

For the injector well design, the intelligent completion was composed of the following:

• Feedthrough packer: V0-rated sealing elements allow zones of interest to be isolated and actuated
separately. Control lines and electric line can feed through the packer element and slips without
losing functionality after the packer is set.
• Pressure and temperature permanent downhole gauge: resonating quartz crystal sensor
installed in a mandrel (ported to tubing and/or annulus) that communicates with the surface
acquisition system will provide pressure and temperature information as long as it is powered up to
surface system. Data from each well are often connected to a supervisory system that will monitor
the entire reservoir and help the operator with choking decisions.
• Interval control valve (ICV) with choking control: debris-tolerant valve designed for high-
pressure, deepwater environments. Metal to metal seals provide proper isolation between annulus
and string and an incremental opening control system attached to the valve allows the well to be
choked in proper percentage to maintain bottomhole pressure or increase production rate.
• For producers, a chemical injection system was implemented in the lower end of the assembly and
will allow scale and erosion prevention, and other functionalities.
• This design helps guarantee each zone will actuate and be analyzed independently, even when
producing simultaneously. This can be a major advantage in terms of production statistics, where
each well does not need to necessarily be a single point of analysis, but each pay zone with their
proper singularities and properties.
As stated previously, the entire set of equipment installed in the field was designed to fit presalt
conditions, maintaining equipment functionality. The components part of the intelligent completion system
were manufactured in Super Duplex, 125 Ksi alloy, developed for 7,500 psi pressure rate and H2S/CO2
environment (Pinheiro et al. 2015). Integrity of completion components in well production life will be
crucial to achieve expected results, obtained in the extended well test phase.

Testing Intelligently
In the oilfield industry, well tests are performed to broaden knowledge of the reservoir and its hydrocarbon
properties. Several tests gather data as volumetric flow rate, temperature, and pressure, and these can
be combined with other information, such as seismic data to improve the reservoir modelling. In simple
words, the amount information gathered and its precision are directly proportional to the quality of the
reservoir model to be developed by the reservoir engineers. The use of intelligent completions combines
zonal isolation, flow control equipment, and permanent monitoring functionalities that allows operator
to manipulate tubing performance while analyzing pressure and temperature changes in real time at
the producing intervals, providing precise zone by zone reservoir analysis. The possibility to perform
well testing while injecting can enhance the reservoir producing zones evaluation, as injection rates and
performance will also be monitored by intelligent completion equipment.
Variation of choke positions in flow control valves will change bottomhole pressures and, with the
proper understanding of well data, formation and reservoir behavior can be better comprehended. Permanent
downhole gauges play an important role in analysis, as will provide real-time data for each variation in
the well.
For all the upper zones, the configuration in gauge mandrels allows the operator to obtain pressure and
temperature from annulus and tubing, while other zones will be monitored only annulus data. With this kind
of information, the operator can estimate production curves and draw down for the entire field, based on
information of each well.
The inflow ports of flow control valves installed with intelligent completions were designed to fit project
purposes. Each exposed port allows a predetermined percentage of the total flow capacity of the ICV. This
OTC-28103-MS 5

design was created considering reservoir parameters and expected production curves, where the operator
can manage the inflow according to his or her perspective of performance.
Besides the gain regarding data acquisition and reservoir understanding, the use of intelligent completion
will also provide economic benefits during the extended well testing phase, and that can be mainly attributed
by the capability to remote operate devices in the well. To choke a valve in a determined zone, operator can
simply actuate hydraulic power units at surface by certain pressure and time and the valve will be open or
close as desired. With this benefit, no rig intervention will be necessary to change well parameters while
well testing, allowing operator to simulate different scenarios with no CAPEX increase.

Presentation of Data and Results

The well test program for the field was initially scheduled for four wells; however, because of operator
limitations, the program was changed for three wells. It is expected that the well test campaign will be
performed from June 2017 to July 2018 when the production campaign will begin in the field and new
completion installations are expected to be made in already drilled wells.
Wells will be connected to a turret-moored FPSO with a capacity of 50,000 BOPD, and compression and
reinjection of 4,000,000 Sm3/D of associated gas. The floating unit arrived at Brazil in May 2017 and is
already in the field, concluding top-side installation before initiating extended well testing in the first well.
The actual oilfield economic scenario is evidencing to the oil companies the importance of reducing cost of
the BOE. This mentality is opening space for the usage of complex technology in fields with high potential,
where guaranteeing a long lifecycle for the field and a high recovery factor are two major objectives.
The use of intelligent completions with EWT can lead to acquiring enough data to perform optimal
and precise reservoir analysis, especially if combined with other geological data, resulting in an effective
completion project for the field. To date, there has been no publishing of well test results and how intelligent
completions have contributed to well test performance; however, considering permanent downhole reservoir
monitoring capabilities, evaluating various scenarios while producing, optimizing flow using intelligent
flow control and use acquired information for decisions along field life, the customer's asset value can be
maximized The results may have a substantial impact in future exploratory projects, not only Brazil's pre-
salt, but also in other major fields around the world.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank Halliburton for permission to publish this work and participate in the conference.

References
Celia, M.F. Nakano, A.C.C., Pinto, J.L. et al. 2009. Pre-Salt Santos Basin -Extended Well Test and Production Pilot in
the Tupi Area - The Planning Phase. Presented at the Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, Texas, 4–7 May.
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Motta R.D., Caldas L.Q., Amaral N.B. 2015. Economic Viability of E&P Projects under Production Sharing Agreement:
Libra field Case Study in Presalt. Presented at the Offshore Technology Conference Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 27–
29 October. OTC-26190-MS. https://doi.org/10.4043/26190-MS.
Paulo, R.J. Martini, A., Maul, A. et al. 2012. Reservoir Geophysics in Brazilian Pre-Salt Oilfields. Presented at the Offshore
Technology Conference, Houston, Texas, 30 April–3 May. OTC-23681-MS. https://doi.org/10.4043/23681-MS.
Pinheiro, R.S. Santos, A.R., Marques, M. et al. 2015. Well Construction Challenges in the Pre-Salt Development
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