For many years, Saudi Aramco and Schlumberger have collaborated to develop a downhole system to merge multilateral technology and intelligent completions to create the world's first "smart laterals." This was the vision of Saudi Aramco's push to drive ever higher recovery factors, an extreme reservoir contact (ERC) approach to reservoir management. These wells can contain upward of 20 km of reservoir contact and require appropriate compartmentalization to ensure uniform heel to toe production throughout the reservoir. Proactive reservoir control is crucial for the efficient sweep of heterogeneous formations. This paper describes a full-scale multi-lateral, multi-compartment intelligent completion where many new technologies were integrated and demonstrated: Well construction and deployment practices to allow electrical umbilicals to be branched into laterals using inductive couplers.Deployment of revolutionary low power infinite position electrical flow control valves.Validation of a fully integrated production monitoring system providing direct downhole measurements of pressures, temperatures, flow rates, and water cut for each compartment.Integration of the surface acquisition and monitoring system with production SCADA to provide real-time downhole production information and health status. The ability to finely control downhole flow, measured directly at the reservoir face, has changed the way the industry will approach reservoir management. The sensing system has been validated with continuous compartment Productivity Index (PI), and multirate testing without shutting in the well. The SCADA integration allows a real-time management function where a compartment can be controlled to a target flow rate or draw down directly without resorting to traditional well system models to estimate choke orifice settings. This paper highlights the development, installation, and validation of this new ERC well system and identifies some of the immediate production impacts emerging from this level of visibility and control at the formation face.

The Shaybah oil field (SHYB) is located in the southeast area of Saudi Arabia and it's where Saudi Aramco drills the most complex multilateral wells and runs the most advanced intelligent well completions. The target reservoir is the "Shuaiba," which is an extensively drilled carbonate reservoir. Also, the geomechanics and overall stresses of the Shuaiba were characterized back in 2001 in a study, which concluded that the maximum horizontal stress orientation in SHYB appeared to be north - south and that the magnitude of this stress is only slightly greater than, or equal to, the minimum horizontal stress making up what is known as a normal faulting stress state (Geomechanics International)2. Consequently, due to the limited amount of data that was available back in 2001, the conclusions regarding stress orientation would need to be confirmed as additional data becomes available. And nowadays, after 14 years of development, a larger set of data has become available. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to supplement the results of the previous geomechanical study performed in 2001 using recent drilling data from 100 wells drilled after the previous geomechanical study was conducted. In other words, this paper uses the findings of recent hole stability data from 100 wells to confirm the earlier suggested normal faulting stress state. And based on the findings of this analyses, there was no strong evidence to suggest that the hole becomes significantly more stable when drilling along the maximum horizontal stress direction (N-S) or conversely, becomes significantly less stable when drilling in any other direction, especially in the minimum horizontal stress direction (E-W). This finding confirms the normal faulting stress in SHYB and that hole stability does not vary greatly with drilling azimuth for this specific field. Most of the last 100 wells drilled in SHYB were drilled along the NE - SW directions of the field. And from 84 wells drilled along the NE - SW directions, only six wells experienced hole instability. Also, out of 11 wells drilled in the N or S direction, which is the maximum horizontal stress direction, no hole stability issues were recorded. Out of the seven wells drilled in the E or W direction, which is the minimum horizontal stress direction, only one well experienced hole instability. Therefore, the findings of the analysis show that there is no strong evidence to indicate that significant hole stability improvement is achieved by drilling in the maximum horizontal stress direction. In conclusion, this paper discusses the results of a field wide case study performed using the drilling data of the last 100 wells drilled in SHYB. The available data seems to confirm the normal faulting stress state that was earlier suggested for the SHYB field. With this confirmation of stress orientation, the expectations for hole stability are improved and this reflects positively on well planning and overall field development.