Design, Development and Installation of Modular Inflow Control Technology

Abstract

Integrating a flow control sliding sleeve into a sand screen can provide multiple advantages to the user in controlling the production inflow. Although it does come with an increased completion cost as well as the number of interventions required when its time to operate those valves. Especially in long horizontal wells, this can become time consuming and inefficient. A few technologies exist to address this issue but they are either too complex or require specialized rigging equipment at the wellsite, which is not desirable. As described herein, a unique, fit for application modular sliding sleeve sand screen assembly with dissolvable plugs was developed that eliminates wash-pipe and allows flow from several screens controlled via a single sliding sleeve. Design and field installation of these modular screens is presented in this paper. The new modular sand-screen consisted of an upper joint, modular middle joint, modular middle joint with ICD/SSD (w/ optional dissolvable plugs), and a lower joint, and novel field installable flow couplings between them. The design allowed for any number of non-ICD/SSD screen joints to be connected to any number of ICD/SSD joints in any order. A computer-aided design was followed to achieve all the operational/mechanical requirements, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to optimize the flow performance characteristics. Prototypes were manufactured and tested prior to conducting successful field trials. The conceptualization and design stage provided several challenges as different ways to achieving modularity and interconnectivity were explored (such as internal to the tubing or external, sealing methods, ease of installation, reliability). Several design calculations were performed to select the most robust design and most suitable solution for the application. Design for manufacturing review, design calculations and CFD analysis helped with the selection of a concept that maximized the flow rates and kept flow velocity under the limit through the critical sections. Dissolvable plugs were used to temporarily close the SSD ports for wash-pipe free installation. The sealing mechanism of plugs was confirmed by differential pressure test up to 500 psi. A valuable, new downhole modular screen design for use w/ICD/SSD providing intervention-less completions without involving complex/expensive technologies is developed, tested and installed. A new, field-proven, modular sand control technology allowing flow from several non-ICD/SSD screen joints to drain into a single ICD/SSD joint, thus eliminating the need to run ICD/SSD on every screen joint in an unconsolidated formation is developed. Dissolvable plug integrated into sliding sleeve ports allowed wash pipe free installation. The technology allows increasing/decreasing the total drainage length at the well site per zonal requirements, thereby reducing costs and improving performance.