Completions in Heavy Oil

Denar Flores
Halliburton

Heavy oil completions had always being a technological challenge, the difficulty to produce this type of crude along with the low price, had made this environment not attractive for the Oil Companies. Recently oil prices and the development of new technologies had created a good interest to invest in heavy oil making a more profitable investment.

There two issues to overcome when we look at the completions alternatives in heavy oil; first is the sand produced in these reservoirs (Sandstone Formations). The formation strength due to the lack of cementation material is low and the high viscosity makes the formation grains to produce in the crude, creating difficulties on bottom or surface and more important loss of production. To obtain the best performance on these reservoirs an open hole completion is the most recommend, because the reservoir have more flow area and less drawn down. Open hole completions has to have the capabilities to stop sand and produce more, that combination can be obtained with expandable completions. This new technology is being applied with success, because stop sands, avoid wellbore collapse and reduce pressure drawdons due to the bigger ID, compared with conventional techniques.

The second problem is zonal isolation in open hole completions when sand production is not a concern. We need to be able to isolate shale strikes and water conning. The new Swell packer technology has the capability of provide a good zonal isolation with minimal operational problems, this technology had being used to develop mature fields where other zonal isolation mechanism are either cost prohibited or not reliable. Swell packers technology is creating a revolution on the way we look completions in heavy Oils.

In this poster session we will show applications of both technologies with their characteristics and how Heavy Oil industry can get more benefits from them.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90062©2006 AAPG Hedberg Research Conference, Veracruz, Mexico