Page 327 - Intelligent Digital Oil And Gas Fields

272 Intelligent Digital Oil and Gas Fields

Fig. 7.15 Aerial section of a 3D numerical model showing a pair of horizontal wells
(producer-injector). (Left) Injecting water without an AICD and (right) 40 AICDs plus
packers. (From Carvajal, G., Torres, M., 2014. Coupling AICD to a wellbore and numerical
model simulation. In: Presentation About AICD Progress. Presented at the Novel Techniques
for Reservoir Management, SPE, Frontier of Technology—Reservoir Technology Forum Held
in New Mexico, USA, November 4–9.)

7.7 OPTIMIZING FIELD PRODUCTION WITH SMART
WELLS
Optimizing smart wells is practically a new science that requires a
series of engineering tools (software and hardware) to evaluate and compute
the effect of valve settings over production. The best way to optimize pro-
duction performance with a smart well is to couple a wellbore hydraulic well
performance simulator with a 3D gridded numerical model. Ajayi and
Konopczynski (2003), Elmsallati and Davies (2005), and Nikolaou et al.
(2006) are among the first references found to predict and optimize ICV
performance in a single well, compared with conventional completions.
Saputelli et al. (2009) have presented the first surface-well model con-
nected to a full field numerical simulator; this paper describes a process to
optimize long-term economic return in oil reservoirs with water flooding
by optimizing the number of wells, usability of ICV valves, and operating