SPE-193542-MS

A Summary of Analytical Methods to Simulate Chemical Treatments in ICD

Completed Wells

Amarpreet Kaur, Robert Stalker, and Gordon M. Graham, Scaled Solutions Ltd; Dario M. Frigo, Plinius Chemical
Consulting/ Scaled Solutions Ltd

Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE International Conference on Oilfield Chemistry held in Galveston, Texas, USA, 8–9 April 2019.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect
any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written
consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may
not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Inflow Control Devices (ICDs) are being increasingly used in complex, heterogeneous reservoirs to make
the inflow profile more uniform, delay breakthrough of water and/or gas and limit differential depletion,
which can lead to crossflow and other detrimental phenomena. However, ICDs not only alter inflow
behaviour: they also affect outflow of fluid during chemical treatments, such as scale squeezes, stimulation,
etc., which may be applied periodically during well life.
Methods to account for the additional flow resistance from ICDs when predicting placement of
bullheaded treatments are discussed in this paper, in particular, to evaluate whether a theoretical approach
based upon Bernoulli's Theorem leads to sufficiently accurate predictions in the absence of laboratory
correlations between pressure drop across the ICD and flow rate. This approach may also become significant
where the laboratory calibration might be expected to have changed during well life, such as, under the
influence of erosion.
The paper describes two analytical methods of simulating placement in a multi-zone well in a
heterogeneous reservoir in the Middle East: the first is empirical and models the pressure drop using an
equation derived from calibration data in the laboratory; the second uses the Bernoulli equation, and is
theoretical. For the empirical approach, the laboratory-based pressure-drop/flowrate calibration data were
fitted to an equation, with parameters that depended upon the nozzle dimensions. The theoretical approach
calculated the pressure drop using the Bernoulli equation for a cylindrical ICD nozzle. Both methods were
used to simulate placement of a generic scale-inhibitor squeeze treatment and the corresponding chemical
returns for each zone in the well. In general, the differences in the predictions between the two models were
found to be very minor, showing that a theoretical approach is sufficiently accurate to design and evaluate
chemical treatments in wells fitted with ICDs in most cases.
This means a very rapid analytical approach can be used to design and evaluate near-wellbore treatments
in such wells without resorting to much more complex, numerical-based reservoir simulators, even when
calibration data about the ICD performance are not available.
2 SPE-193542-MS

Introduction
Well designs have grown more complex over the years as progressive development was required to drain
increasingly complex and challenging reservoirs in the most cost-efficient manner possible, evolving from
vertical wells to horizontal/deviated producing intervals, to extended-reach/multilateral wells, sometimes
with intelligent completions (Fig. 1).

Figure 1—Extended-Reach multilateral well schematic

Such completions can improve hydrocarbon production relative to that from a simpler, single well, but the
longer the producing interval and the greater number of reservoirs encountered, the greater the probability
that reservoir heterogeneity will become a significant factor, either in terms of permeability, pressures or
proximity to fluid contacts. This can make the production "asymmetric" and can lead to early breakthrough
of water or gas and/or progressive differential depletion of the various zones. In such cases, ICDs can be used
to make drainage of the various zones more uniform, effectively by subjecting the entire producing zone to
an additional resistance to flow into the bottom-hole of the well such that the total resistance (this plus that
resulting from the near-wellbore inflow parameters, kh [permeability times "height"], Skin, drawdown) is
more uniform for each zone. The more uniform inflow can delay early breakthrough and mitigate the effects
of differential depletion. However, essentially all well jewellery introduces additional complexity, changes
the flow hydrodynamics (generally introducing additional turbulence) and nearly always introduces more
opportunity for flow-assurance and integrity challenges.
Inflow modelling is required to determine the optimized configuration of ICDs in any specific well
penetrating the target reservoir(s), but there is also the opportunity to determine whether a similar
configuration can lead to a desirable profile for fluid outflow during chemical treatments throughout the life
of the well, e.g., stimulation, scale squeezes, asphaltenes solvent treatments. Although this can be done with
reservoir simulators, the cost in time and expertise required to set up and simulate individual well treatments
with typical "numerical", finite-difference-based models can be prohibitive. In contrast, analytical models
can provide the same conclusions in a matter of seconds. The literature on the development of analytical
models to simulate ICDs is sparse, but Aadnoy et al. (2009) present a model to calculate the pressure drop
and flow regimes in an around an ICD, but do not investigate the impact of ICD pressure drops on chemical
placement, when using the ICD in "injection mode".
The current paper proposes the use of analytical models to simulate the effects of ICDs on placement of
inhibitor squeeze treatments. It not only models the placement of the treatment during injection, but also
simulates the adsorption/desorption characteristics of the scale inhibitor onto the rock and the fluid inflow
during the subsequent production phase, essentially giving the treatment flowback behaviour for each zone
in the completion together with the composite profile for the entire well. As such, it can be used as a tool for
determining the optimal ICD configuration for both inflow and outflow, as well as for designing inhibitor
squeezes in the most efficient and effective manner. Periodically deployed scale- inhibitor "squeeze"
SPE-193542-MS 3

treatments are among the commonest methods to dose scale inhibitor (SI) into the reservoir, such that it
protects the system against inorganic scaling all the way from the near-wellbore reservoir of the producers
to the facilities, and often beyond. A great deal of effort has been expended in understanding the processes
that govern the chemical dosimetry into the produced waters (Sorbie et al. 2005), and thence, to develop
models that enable such treatments to be optimized for treatment "lifetime" (defined either in terms of
production time or in total volume of scale-prone produced water that the treatment has protected), cost-
effectiveness (chemical plus deployment plus hydrocarbon deferment), formation damage potential, and
often a combination of these factors.
The work reported in the current paper is a further development of modelling of squeeze treatments, but
does so for wells equipped with ICDs, building the ICD flow module into a previous, validated in-house
model (Chavan et al., 2014). In a previous paper (Kaur et al., 2018) two methods to model ICDs were
investigated. The first method explicitly models the pressure drop across an ICD using an equation derived
from laboratory data measuring pressure drop across ICD nozzles at various flow rates. The alternative
(implicit) method used a dual-permeability model to simulate an ICD as additional formation damage
"Skin" in the near-wellbore by reducing the near-wellbore permeability to generate an additional differential
pressure equal to that across an ICD. A comparison of the two methods concluded that implicitly modelling
an ICD as near-wellbore damage is unrepresentative of reality because it showed the wrong dependence of
the pressure drop on flow rate. Having abandoned this implicit approach, in the current paper two methods
of explicitly modelling the flowrate/pressure relationship are compared. The first method uses the empirical
equation derived from laboratory data (as described in the previous paper), while the second models the
pressure drop across the ICD using Bernoulli's theorem of pipe flow through a constriction. The intention is
to determine whether a theoretical approach can be used as the default when measured data about the ICD
behaviour is not available without unduly compromising the accuracy of the placement simulations.

Analytical Modelling of an ICD

Analytical models utilize precise equations, whereas numerical simulators typically approximate partial
differential equations that cannot be solved analytically. The latter perform iterative routines that are
designed to improve the accuracy of the approximation but at the cost of increased computational time.
Therefore, an analytical model is always favoured over a numerical one if the calculation is amenable to
analytical solution because of the speed of calculation. The newly developed ICD model can deliver a
solution within seconds, comparable analysis of the system using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD)
analysis or reservoir simulations would require several hours or even days of computational time.
Two explicit analytical methods to model ICDs have been evaluated in this paper. Method 1 calculates the
pressure drop across the ICD using an equation derived from measured data. Fig. 2 illustrates the flowrate
versus pressure drop data measured in the laboratory across ICDs of different nozzle diameters but with the
same length. The data could be fitted with a power-law trend.
4 SPE-193542-MS

Figure 2—Measured pressure drop vs flowrate for different ICD nozzle diameters

From Fig. 2, Eq. 1 was determined where ΔP is the pressure drop, q is the flowrate in the production
interval, n is the number of nozzles in each ICD and c is a constant which is specific to each nozzle diameter.

(1)

Method 2 calculates the pressure drop across the ICD using Bernoulli's principle (Faber, 2016).
Bernoulli's principle follows the laws of conservation of energy in which an increase in velocity (kinetic
energy) must result in a decrease in pressure ("PV" energy). The Bernoulli Equation in this work assumes
incompressible flow with negligible influence from turbulence and transfer of heat with the surroundings
(Eq. 2).

(2)

The ICD pressure drop is then incorporated into the Darcy Equation as an additional pressure drop term
(Eq. 3)

(3)

Simulating a Middle-Eastern Well

The well that was used to evaluate the various methods of modelling ICDs was one from the Middle East and
is completed in a multi-zoned reservoir with properties shown in Table 1. It was described as a horizontal
well, but the generally progressive increase in reservoir pressure in progressing from Zone 17 to 1 implies
that it is not completely horizontal. Nevertheless, for the purposes of the simulation, the well was assumed
to be truly horizontal such that the true vertical depth was the same all along the producing interval and the
variation in pressure was solely due to real differences in zonal pressure without the effects of hydrostatic
pressure. The size and number of nozzles selected per zone was the actual one for this well, which had been
optimized by the operator for uniform inflow.
SPE-193542-MS 5

Table 1—Reservoir properties of the well used in the simulations

Number of
Zone Length (ft) Permeability (mD) Porosity Pressure (psi) Nozzle Size (mm)
ICD Nozzles

Zone 17 679 6.71 0.264 3020 2 4

Zone 16 519 19.31 0.286 3085 2 4

Zone 15 498 8.51 0.275 3084 2 8

Zone 14 519 7.06 0.271 3073 2 8

Zone 13 500 5.94 0.261 3022 2 6

Zone 12 519 5.53 0.252 3061 2 4

Zone 11 480 5.55 0.249 2995 2 4

Zone 10 759 5.71 0.243 3058 3 4

Zone 9 759 6.87 0.251 3123 3 4

Zone 8 480 71.93 0.255 3141 2 4

Zone 7 760 10.26 0.256 3139 3 4

Zone 6 521 50.71 0.245 3164 2 4

Zone 5 761 4.81 0.217 3217 3 4

Zone 4 480 4.45 0.211 3255 2 4

Zone 3 519 3.94 0.206 3237 2 4

Zone 2 917 3.65 0.201 3278 4 8

Zone 1 956 3.24 0.198 3355 4 8

The inhibitor squeeze treatment in the well was first simulated assuming no ICDs are in place in order
to gauge the placement challenge prior to ICD installation. A SI treatment volume of 3000 bbl, injected at
10 bpm, comprising 900 bbl of main flush (10% SI concentration) and 2100 bbl of overflush (containing
no SI), was used for simulations, which gives a penetration depth of 1 ft for this well if uniform placement
and porosity (average of 0.24) are assumed.
Fig. 3 presents the placement in the simulated well if there were no ICDs installed. It is clear that a
placement challenge can be expected if treatment is injected by bullheading, at least at the rates employed
here, because the calculation shows that five zones at the toe of the well were not only left untreated but
were actually cross flowing into the other zones during the injection of the chemical treatment. Fig. 4 shows
the predicted treatment lifetime for each zone that was treated. Besides there being no trace for Zones 1 - 5,
which received no part of the treatment, there is large range in treatment lifetimes among the treated zones:
taking a Minimum Effective Dose (MED) of 10 ppm, this ranges from around 10 days for Zone 6 to almost
120 days for Zone 11. This emphasizes the risk of not having a means to control placement in this well.
6 SPE-193542-MS

Figure 3—Calculated placement per zone in the well when no ICDs are in place

Figure 4—Zonal SI returns versus time from the well when no ICDs are in place

The well was then simulated with the ICD configuration actually employed in the field (Table 1) using
modelling Methods 1 (empirically calibrated) and 2 (Bernoulli-theorem based), and the results are shown in
Fig. 5. This comparison suggests that the Bernoulli-based, theoretical model will lead to similar conclusions
about fluid placement as where the ICD has been specifically calibrated in the laboratory. This is further
supported by Fig. 6, which presents the differential pressure calculated across each ICD using both methods.
The small difference in placement and ICD pressure drop are likely to be attributable to aspects of the ICD
design that are not captured in the theoretical treatment. Nevertheless, this work shows that even treating
the ICDs as simple orifices, which are readily amenable to calculation using the Bernoulli theorem (Method
2), leads to satisfactory placement calculations, and therefore, this approach can be used to simulate ICD
wells that do not have calibration data relating flow to pressure drop.
SPE-193542-MS 7

Figure 5—Calculated placement in the well using methods 1 and 2 and the zonal water production
rates as a percentage of the total water production (assuming production according to kh)

Figure 6—Differential pressure across ICDs per zone calculated using methods 1 (empirical) and 2 (Bernoulli Theorem)

Fig. 5 also highlights that for this well (but a commonly encountered situation), the water production,
which is assumed for the purposes of this example to be proportional to the kh of each zone, is
produced primarily from the middle of the well, in particular, Zones 6 and 8. This means the treatment is
disproportionate relative to the water production for many zones, e.g., the fractional water production in
Zones 8, 6 and 1 is significantly larger than the fraction of the treatment placed therein. This is reflected in
the per-zone SI return calculated by the model (Fig. 7 and 8 for Methods 1 and 2, respectively) as these zones
have extremely short treatment lifetimes. Interestingly, although the two ICD models gave very consistent
results on pressure drops and fractional placement, there is clearly a "tipping-point" effect in zones where
very small amounts of fluid are placed. So, while both models conclude that Zone 1 takes almost no treatment
- 0.12% for Model 1 and 8 × 10−7% for Model 2 - the difference between these is large enough to lead to a
large discrepancy between the flowback behaviour for this zone (comparing Fig. 7 and 8). In reality, both
models conclude that this zone is treated to a negligible extent.
8 SPE-193542-MS

Figure 7—Zonal SI returns versus time from the well when method 1 (empirical) is used to calculate placement

Figure 8—Zonal SI returns versus time from the well when method 2 (Bernoulli Theorem) is used to calculate placement

Summary and Conclusions

In this paper two methods of modelling ICD pressure drop were investigated. Method 1 was an empirical
approach, i.e., an equation was used that was fitted to measured laboratory data relating flowrates to pressure
drop across ICD nozzles of different diameters. Method 2 was a theoretical approach evaluated for cases
where such calibration data are not available for the ICDs, or potentially where they may have changed over
time (e.g., due to erosion): it derived the pressure drops using Bernoulli's equations for constricted flow.
Using input from an actual multi-zone well in a heterogeneous reservoir as a test case, it was found that
both methods resulted in similar values for the calculated pressure drops across the ICDs and hence, also
showed similar fraction of treatment placement into each zone. Therefore, this work validates the use of a
generic, theoretical approach for modelling ICD in the absence of calibration data or where such calibration
might be expected to change over time. It should be noted, however, that these methods assume the ICD
constriction is a circular hole with a specified diameter, so if a more complex ICD design were installed,
SPE-193542-MS 9

such as those that use complex hydrodynamic flow paths to differentiate autonomously between different
produced fluids, then measured data would still be required for the current analytical model.

References
Aadnoy, B.S. and Hareland, G., Analysis of Inflow Control Devices, SPE 122824 (2009)
Chavan, C., Rao, E., Jha M. and Stalker, R., Chemical Qualification and Field Application of a Nondamaging Scale
Squeeze Treatment in the Mangala Field, SPE 168120 (2014).
Faber, T.E, 2016, Fluid Mechanics, Encyclopedia Britannica, 25th October 2016, https://www.britannica.com/science/
fluid-mechanics/Hydrodynamics (accessed 20th October 2017)
Kaur, A., Stalker, R., Graham, G.M., Simulating Squeeze Treatments in Wells Completed with Inflow Control Devices,
SPE 190740 (2018).
Sorbie, K.S. and Gdanski, R.D., A Complete Theory of Scale-Inhibitor Transport and Adsorption/Desorption in Squeeze
Treatments, SPE 95088 (2005).