Smart well technology for active production control

Smart wells, also known as intelligent wells, are technology in the oil and gas industry that
involves application of down-hole measurement and control of reservoir flow. With smart
wells, hydrocarbon production can be transformed from passive to active production control.
This could be achieved by studying the reservoir flow behaviour based on results of downhole measurements and continuously updated dynamic reservoir models. This write-up
focuses on application of smart well technology in the control of active production.
In daily production (on a scale of days to weeks), application of down-hole measurement is
able to improve process control in well surveillance and production measurement in flow
allocation. For instance, down-hole control can enable immediate action during gas or water
breakthrough. Pressures as well as oil, gas and water rates are measured and controlled by
short term optimisation objectives such as production targets and utilisation rates.
In reservoir management (on a scale of months to years), application of smart well enables
traditional vertical wells to be further developed into horizontal and multi-lateral wells. As a
result, asset management can be improved by reducing well intervention costs, reducing
number of wells, accelerating production and most importantly increasing ultimate recovery.
In this context, smart wells are able to provide information such as production histories, well
tests and reservoir images to maximise asset revenues by minimising operating expenditure
and maximising ultimate recovery.
Essentially, smart well technology involves application such as down-hole measurement,
control and reservoir imaging. Besides single point and distributed measurement of pressure
and temperature, researches are now looking into flow rate and composition measurement as
well. Down-hole flow and pressure control can be achieved through the use of interval
control valves (ICV). With acquisition of real-time data, smart well technology can enable
reservoir imaging by using 4-dimensional (4D) seismic, also known as time lapse seismic,
to achieve a picture of fluid front movements in the reservoir through observation of the
differences in seismic images over time.
Currently, applications of smart well technology is used in water or gas shut-off as shown in
Figure 1. A single well perforated in separate reservoir layers is used to drain a reservoir with
water drive and strong horizontal barriers. As water breakthrough in different layers does not
occur simultaneously due to permeability differences, a completion with an on-off interval
control valves (ICV) enables only certain well segments to be shut off when water breaks
through, thus reducing the amount of water to be processed at surface and preventing early
lift-die out of the well. By using the results from pressure and temperature sensors at the
ICVs, detection of the water could be done as well. Similarly, this could also be used to shut
off early gas influx.

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Figure 1: Smart well technology to control water break-through in a layered reservoir.

Another application of smart well technology is in commingled production from zones with
different pressures, where the inflow from the highest pressured zone can be choked with a
continuously variable ICV to avoid cross-flow to the lower pressured zones. As a result, the
use of ICVs is able to accelerate the production and maintain a constant production plateau
without requiring expensive and time-consuming well work-overs.
Besides that, a smart well can be used to connect an oil reservoir with weak gas cap drive to
an underlying gas reservoir with a higher pressure as shown in Figure 2. This application is
known as gas dump flooding. The gas dump flood can be controlled using pressure sensors
and a continuously variable ICV at the injection interval. The oil could be produced either
using a second well (Figure 2) or through the same well as used for the internal gas injection,
using a concentric or parallel dual completion solution.

Figure 2: Smart well technology in gas dump flooding to maintain the pressure in an oil reservoir.

Currently, researches in smart well technology involves application of measurement and

control concepts to reservoir engineering. In this context, it is important to have a system that
is capable of building and updating a reservoir model using the massive amount of data
obtained from down-hole measurement. Having real-time data obtained from smart wells,
system models of the behaviour of reservoirs, wells and surface facilities can be developed.
As a result, reservoir engineers could study flow behaviour using a model-based control
framework which is equipped with time-varying and non-linear aspects. Also, model
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reduction techniques and control algorithms can be developed for the systematic optimisation
of production parameters in order to systematically take into account the effects of
uncertainties in the entire cycle of system response, measurement, modelling and control.
Additionally, smart well technology has also been used as conceptual solutions to improve
reservoir drainage, especially in heterogeneous reservoirs. This can be done by controlling
the ICV setting of a pair of horizontal production and water injection wells with ICVs based
on an intuitive optimisation algorithm to optimise recovery. Besides that, smart well
technology can also be used to counteract the effect of pressure drop in horizontal wells by
using the smart stinger completion (SSC) or by the inflow switching process (ISP). As shown
in Figure 3, (a) SSC uses an extended stinger with one continuously variable ICV at the heel
to flatten the draw down profile, and thus the inflow profile whereas (b) ISP uses a number of
on/off ICVs to regularly move the point of highest draw down along the well bore. Once
water or gas has broken through, that particular interval is shut off and the water or gas cone
is allowed to recede before re-opening of the interval.

Figure 3: Control of inflow using (left) (a) smart stinger completion (SSC) and (right) (b) inflow
switching profile (ISP)

Last but not least, with the huge amount of data obtained from smart well technology,
computational methods for smart well modelling has been developed to handle these data. A
major integration aspect of smart wells concerns routing of real-time data to modelling
software. This involves data acquisition, transmission and storage in a data base, data
brokering, quality control, filtering and transfer to modelling tools. Expertise in automated
production operations needs to be extended to down hole tools and data transmissions
systems. For example, the grid block size in reservoir simulators is often far too big to
accurately represent the detailed near-well bore flow, therefore a semi-analytical correction
method known as the Peaceman model is usually used to account for that.
In conclusion, smart wells works on the concept of using measurement and control to
optimise oil and gas production. Hardware is developing fast in particular in fibre-optical
techniques and cable-less communication which will greatly improve capabilities of downhole measurement in the near future. Looking at the big picture, future research in smart well
technology should focus on asset management and development of improved concepts for
smart reservoir management, the handling of large amounts of data, and increased
integration between disciplines.

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