Open-Hole Fluid Displacement for Carbonate Stimulation in Liner Completions

Today, many wells in heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs throughout the Middle East and Caspian Sea area are being completed with long intervals and complex completion equipment, such as limited entry liners and inflow control devices (ICDs). Accurate modeling and understanding of fluid placement during a stimulation operation through such long complex completions can be quite challenging. In this paper, an integrated approach of modeling, experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations will be presented. A computational tool based on a transient one-dimensional (1D) approach has been developed in-house to model stimulation through such completions. In order to validate the 1D approach for reliable fluid displacement predictions, annulus fluid displacement experiments in perforated liners supported by CFD simulations have been conducted. The experimental setup consists of an outer Lucite pipe representing the well-bore geometry and an inner aluminum pipe with multiple perforations of variable diameter. The setup mimics the real field application in a 1:1 scale with respect to the pipe and perforation diameters while the test section is limited to 27 ft. The experimental procedure is as follows: (i) fluid is pumped into the annulus through the perforations until the annulus is completely filled, (ii) the fluid tank is switched “on-the-fly” to the tank with the displacing fluid resulting in the displacement of the annulus fluid by the displacing fluid through the perforations. The experiments and the CFD simulations indicate that even with a single open perforation inside the 27-ft test section, the three-dimensional (3D) flow field around the perforation rapidly transitions to uniform annular flow within a few feet uniformly displacing the annulus fluid. The model also provides insight into various well injection processes in sandstone and carbonate formation, such as scale squeezes, solvent treatments, and HF acid treatments.