Successful Application of Swell Packer Technology to Shut-off Water Production in Horizontal Wells - Case Studies from Onshore Abu Dhabi

摘要

The subject field has been on production for more than 35 years from multi-layered heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs.Due to the field's maturity,the water cut has started increasing gradually in some producers and,consequently,production from these wells has been affected awaiting implementation of artificial lift.To deal with the water production and prolong the natural flowing life of the wells,various water shut-off techniques available in the industry were evaluated in order to select the most suitable one that could be deployed in open-hole sections of horizontal wells.This paper presents two case studies where a mechanical water shut-off technique,involving swell packers,was successfully applied in horizontal open-hole sections.The systematic approach adopted by the operator to build the business case,select the candidates,acquire the PLT data,execute the jobs,evaluate the performance of the water shut-off jobs and future plans are presented in this paper.The paper also addresses the conceptual application of borehole segmentation with swell packers to improve well performance.