First all-electric intelligent completion system evolves for deep water: when the world's first all-electric intelligent completion was installed in a subsea deepwater well, it was the culmination of five years of development, testing and trials. System acceptance has been restrained, but improvements have been made

World Oil, May, 2005 by Oswaldo M. Moreira

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Well update and current status. Currently, the all-electric intelligent completion system is monitoring real-time measurements of downhole pressure, temperature and flow in the tubing and annulus. As a result, the operator can selectively manage injection flow contribution to the reservoir intervals in real time, thereby allowing continuous field optimization in response to changing depletion conditions downhole. This intelligent well technology allows injection flow contribution to be properly allocated, water and gas breakthrough to be controlled, and multiple target zones to be pre-completed and selectively brought onstream (or shut off at will) from the PC-based control system.

The injection rate for the single-string, dual-zone well, as established on Aug. 23, 2003, was 15,000 bwpd. The water was distributed into two different intervals: 5,700 bpd into the upper zone and 9,300 bpd into the lower zone.

An analysis of time devoted to this completion operation reveals that rig time, over and above that which would have been required for conventional completion procedures, was negligible. However, had Petrobras chosen to use its conventional service, test string technique rather than the intelligent completion system, an additional two trips would have been required to perform the selective injectivity testing. Thus, ultimately, using an intelligent completion system proved to be a time-saver.

LESSONS LEARNED

From the beginning of this project, it was accepted by both operator and intelligent completion provider that the project's complexity did not represent an operational risk, as long as all interfaces were investigated, discussed, adapted and tested.

Comprehensive deployment simulations and contingency failure analyses were exhaustively and repeatedly performed, with the driving rationale that, although rig time was important, the project's most crucial aspect was ensuring flawless system deployment during its debut. Additional lessons learned are included in the following paragraphs.

Decentralization. There is still room for increasing synergy levels among several multi-company, multi-disciplinary teams. Representatives of all companies and disciplines need to be more directly involved, to reduce mis-communication or unnecessary response delays.

Continuation. In projects of this magnitude, personnel changes among teams/ companies involved can cause critical disruptions not only to scheduling (i.e., time required to bring new/replacement team members up to speed), but also to project knowledge, because of potential loss of critical information links. Therefore, every attempt should be made to avoid these situations and the disturbances they cause, or at least to take predictive, preventive and/or contingency actions.

Post-installation phase. Unlike standard completions, where service companies' participation usually has a well-defined actuation timeframe, the respective roles of all players (operators and service companies) following intelligent completion deployment is not so well-defined. The process of defining these roles will generate change, not only in the way that operators reservoir and production personnel interface with each other, but also in current internal procedures and practices that limit the effectiveness and value added by intelligent completion technology.