Bringing an Inoperable Well to New Life with DTS

Summary Reservoir monitoring is critical for the management of a field and to accomplish this challenge at the best Oil Companies use expertise including (but not limited to) production logging, downhole tracers and fiber optic permanent and retrievable installations of distributed sensing technology. When challenging environments characterized by asphaltenes, waxes and solids presence inside the completion prevent any reliable measurements via traditional production logging and there is no possibility to work-over the well to install permanent production logging solutions, fiber optic distributed sensing through coiled-tubing can be used to monitor in real time completion integrity, post-stimulation job efficiency and fluid flow behavior through temperature (DTS) and acoustic (DAS) measurements. Several applications on long horizontal drains completed with slotted liners, stimulated with acid treatment and characterized by fast asphaltenes deposition during production drilled in a naturally fractured carbonate reservoir demonstrate this added value. In particular, the outcomes of the enhanced interpretations of retrievable fiber-optic DTS and DAS have been successfully used for production optimization purposes. This illustrates these technologies’ reliability and suggests a robust modus operandi as alternative to conventional production logging techniques. The methodology is described in this extended abstract through a selected case study (well Y in field X).