What is an Intelligent Well?

The following descriptions also apply to a smart well:

A well equipped with downhole devices, for monitoring or control, which will allow to change the well architecture, refine models or modify the production profile in order to improve its production or injectivity.

An intelligent well or smart well provides of advantageous methods for measuring in real-time very valuable well data for reservoir and production engineers. What started with Permanent Downhole Gauges or PDGs measuring Pressures and Temperatures has progressed into flow rate measurement, density, pH, fluid phase, watercut and more. Measurements do not limit to those well known to production and reservoir teams; in non-conventional projects, where subsurface rock mechanics behavior is critical for the characterization of the reservoir, real-time monitoring of stress[1], levels of deformation, repositioning, displacement, and other (microseismic events, markers), play a vital role in adjustment of models.

Multizone well

An intelligent well makes feasible a selectable multizone completion with only one run without needing additional interventions or costly workovers. These selectable zones can be later shut in or opened at will from the surface to produce only the most optimum zones at the right time.

It permits to adjust each zone in a multizone well in order to control pressures and make simultaneously flow the most productive ones.

It provides a mechanism to bypass the production of non-commercial fluids (like formation water), without the need to lift these fluids to the surface for processing and elimination.

An intelligent well makes possible the fluid recovery in wells below the economic production level when it is completed in multizone mode and more than one zone is later put in production passing the economic limit.

It makes possible the simultaneous production from multiple zones in countries where state regulations restrict the production of more than one zone if the flow of the other zones cannot be measured. With the use of downhole measurement devices and interval control valves zone flow allocation can be achieved giving as a result an increase of production over time.

An intelligent well significantly improves the efficiency and production of known artificial lift methods like Electrosubmersible Pumps (ESP), sucker rod pumps and gas lift, by means of a better automatic fluid level management.

A smart well controls the amount of fluid contribution from any of the zones at the formation face by means of downhole adjustable choke valves. It could help to reduce significantly the watercut of a water producer formation without shutting it in completely while maintaining the drive and reducing the water production. The same method could be applied to reservoirs with strong gas drive.File:Example.jpg