A Smart Approach in Acid Stimulation Resulted in Successful Reviving of Horizontal Producers Equipped With ICD Completions: Saudi Arabia Case History

摘要

Passive completions, comprised of inflow control devices and external packers, are usually considered in horizontal wells, located in risky or mature areas. These completions are proven techniques for reservoir conformance to mitigate water or gas-coning problems and ensure uniform production contributions along the horizontal section. After well completion or shortly after initial production, these wells may fail to sustain production, largely due to formation damage or plugging in the inflow control devices. The conventional acid program, applied on wells with non-passive completions, is not suitable on these wells, due to the risk of impacting the completion integrity to the extent that it will violate the installation purposes. The requirements of acid treating wells with the same completions become inevitable due to the increasing number of wells equipped with these completions in a major carbonate reservoir in Saudi Arabia. A smart approach has been developed through innovative thinking to stimulate wells equipped with passive completions. The new approach has successfully stimulated four wells and resulted in restoring well productivity. This smart stimulation approach demonstrates a competent method to clean out the ICD completion along the horizontal section and to remove formation damage. This paper presents in depth discussion of rigless acid stimulation operations on oil producers to remove formation damage and improve well productivity, at a reduced cost. This paper also outlines the successful application of the smart approach in acid stimulation of horizontal wells — equipped with passive completion — and discussed the post-treatment results.