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A study of Down-hole Water Sink (DWS) technology - optimum DWS design

in vertical well considering reservoir parameters

Conference Paper · May 2007

DOI: 10.29118/IPA.2437.07.SE.010

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 © IPA, 2011 - 31st Annual Convention Proceedings, 2007
PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION
Thirty-First Annual Convention and Exhibition, May 2007
A STUDY OF DOWN-HOLE WATER SINK (DWS) TECHNOLOGY - OPTIMUM DWS DESIGN
IN VERTICAL WELL CONSIDERING RESERVOIR PARAMETERS
Wynda Astutik*
ABSTRACT
Down-hole Water Sink is an effective technology to
prevent water coning problem in oil wells which
usually occurs in a strong water drive reservoir with
good vertical communication. Using DWS, a
vertical oil well is dually completed for oil
production and water drainage with two
completions separated with packer. When properly
designed, water-free oil is produced from top
completion while oil-free water will be produced
from bottom completion. The main idea of this
technology is to create an opponent pressure
drawdown in water zone, so water coning can be
prevented and water-free oil can be obtained at
surface.
This study involves experiments with computer
simulation to model reservoir conditions and to
approximate the existence of water coning in dual
completion well. A volumetric two dimensional
radial 2D reservoir model with bottom aquifer is
appropriate to simulate this condition. This
computer-simulated reservoir is used to confirm oil
recovery in DWS well considering several reservoir
parameters which influence DWS performance.
These parameters are oil and water rate, vertical
anisotropy, absolute horizontal permeability, oil
perforation interval-oil zone thickness ratio, and
water-oil mobility ratio.
The objective of this study is to develop a
correlation to obtain the best combination of oil and
water rate to obtain maximum oil recovery. It also
provides inflow performance window (IPW) plot to
decide whether the oil and water rate combination
should cause water coning, reversed coning, or
segregated inflow. These will be used as a guideline
for DWS design to select the optimum conditions,
maximum oil recovery and water-free oil
production at surface.
* Institute of Technology Bandung
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IPA07-SE-010
INTRODUCTION
The production of water from oil wells is a common
occurrence which increases the cost of production
operations and may reduce the efficiency of the
depletion mechanism and the recovery of the
reserves. Water coning occurs when water-oil
contact becomes unstable, which happens at a
certain production rate when viscous forces due to
pressure gradient around the well bore become
greater than gravitational forces due to differences
between oil and water density. One of the simplified
methods to predict water coning has been studied by
M.C.T Kuo and C.L DesBrisay (1983). This study
gave a correlation to predict critical rate, water
breakthrough time and water cut performance.
Another alternative to control water production in
an oil producing well is downhole water sink
(DWS) technology. It was proposed in 1991 and
have been published by Swisher and Wojtanowicz
(1995). They were successfully shown that this
novel method works to increase the ultimate oil
recovery, prevents water coning and to increases oil
production rate without water breakthrough. In
DWS, a well is dually completed in oil and water
zones which are separated by a packer. An equal
pressure drawdown is created in water perforated
zone to prevent water coning and to create a stable
oil-water contact, so water-free oil can be produced
from the top completion while oil-free water is
produced from the bottom completion.
Until recently, some previous work has been done
to study DWS performance and have been
published by Marhaendrajana and Alliyah (2006),
Swisher and Wojtanowicz (1995), Bowlin et al
(1997), and Wojtanowicz et al (1991). Inikori
(2002) used a numerical simulator to observe that
DWS can reduce the effect of coning. A successful
first field implementation of DWS by Hunt
Petroleum in 1994 showed that DWS technology
work in terms of water coning reversal.
The previous studies mostly focused on comparing
DWS with conventional completion technique.