Saudi Aramco and Shell-Halliburton joint venture WellDynamics are to jointly develop a new multilateral intelligent completion system—a.k.a. the smart well. The project will leverage Aramco’s ‘maximum reservoir contact’ (MRC) well design which in some circumstances has attained over 5 km of reservoir contact through laterals from the main wellbore. These ‘intelligent’ completions include valves on each lateral that can be controlled from the surface.
Haradh
Saudi Aramco 2006 Haradh Increment III field produces some 300,000 bbls/day from 32 MRC wells equipped with Well-Dynamics’ SmartWell intelligent completion technology. The new initiative will extend the MRC technology to ‘extreme’ reservoir contact (ERC).
Saggaf
Muhammad Saggaf, manager of Aramco’s EXPEC R&D center explained, ‘MRC wells are limited to four or five laterals because each downhole valve requires a mechanical control line to the wellhead. ERC wells would relax this requirement. We envision ERC wells of fifty to one hundred smart laterals that would efficiently drain the reservoir and maximize economic recovery.’
Telemetry
ERC will deploy digital telemetry to control flow and transmit data to and from laterals to the surface, leveraging WellDynamics’ monitoring and flow control technology.
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