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Smart Wells and Techniques for Reservoir Monitoring 269

delay the water breakthrough compared with an open-hole completion.
Daneshy et al. (2010) and Twerda et al. (2011) have conducted research
on ICDs and determined that they are excellent tools to control water con-
ing in water flooding. In fact, their research based on simulation study found
that ICD use leads to an increased oil-recovery factor, but not necessarily to
increased net present value (NPV) or internal rate of return (IRR). They
also found that ICDs do not work properly in gas coning or low permeability
reservoirs for their cases.
Carvajal et al. (2013a,b) have shown the impact of ICD completions
coupled with a 3D gridded, three-phase flow numerical model applied in
a horizontal well with permeability variation among 1, 100, 10, 1, and
100 md. They simulated one horizontal well producer of 3000ft with
40 ICDs segmented into five regions, isolated with swell packers. The objec-
tive was to reduce the water cut and delay the water breakthrough from an
active bottom aquifer. The simulation results are shown in Fig. 7.14, which
compare an open-hole completion with an ICD completion.
The results show that water breakthrough occurred earlier in the open-
hole completion at 500th day; whereas, with an ICD completion, the water
breakthrough occurred at 630th day. Moreover, the waterfront using the

Fig. 7.14 Vertical cross section (XZ) along a west lateral section of a multilateral well
showing the water saturation front at different time steps for an open-hole completion
(left) and ICD completion (right). (Taken with permission from SPE 164815.)