“As an industry, we have come a long way. From drilling vertical wells to slanted wells, then using slotted liners in horizontal wells, via passive inflow strategies to now active inflow control valves (AICV),” says Brent Brough, CCO at Norwegian Tech Company InflowControl.
The firm, which was formed by three former Statoil (now Equinor) employees, Vidar Mathiesen, Bjørnar Werswick and Haavard Aakre, develops active inflow control valves for downhole completions to maximise net hydrocarbon production. And net is an important word here, as the technology simultaneously minimises the inflow of unwanted fluids.
Brent started his career in Canada, but also spent significant time in Russia at Sakhalin, where he learned a lot about how the latest technology was applied in the long horizontal wells of the development. “When I came to Sakhalin Island in 2007, they were using a new type of completion that I hadn’t seen in Canada before: Passive inflow control devices in the ERD (extended reach) wells to balance production conformance and defer water breakthrough. It was state-of-the-art at the time.”
“We have progressed quite a bit since…”
The technology that is now being applied by companies such as InflowControl is a clear example of how the industry is moving towards maximising recovery factors from existing and new fields.
You often hear that the oil and gas industry is slow in adapting new tech, but Brent has a different perspective on that: “The rate of adoption from the industry over the past two years has been significant; companies trialling a lot of technologies,” he says.
Brent is also adamant as to where the future of hydrocarbon production lies. “The future lies in a combination of new fields and redevelopment of older ones. We as a team see so many reservoirs around the world where there are huge volumes of hydrocarbons remaining. That is really the exciting part here.”
“What could be done at the time when fields were initially developed is very different from what can be done today,” Brent continues. “A lot of operators are now looking into this, and instead of the big ones, we see that it is actually the smaller players, with significant financial skin in the game when it comes to their assets, who are trying out new things to increase oil production.
…and instead of the big ones, we see that it is actually the smaller players, with significant financial skin in the game when it comes to their assets, who are trying out new things to increase oil production
The latest developments
What are the latest developments the company is working on? “Something that has caused a bit of a stir in the subsurface technology community is an inflow device that does not look at viscosity differences, which is the standard approach, but rather isolates fluids based on density,” Brent explains. “The reason to develop this tool is that in some major reservoirs, the viscosity difference between oil and water is so small, we wouldn’t have the ability to differentiate them effectively using our “conventional” valves. But we now have a solution based on density valves, and with those, we can achieve a 30 to 60 % reduction in produced water this way. It opens up possibilities in quite a few reservoirs around the world.”
“There are two more technologies that we are currently developing at the moment and that will be ready for deployment imminently,” Brent continues. “We have been developing autonomous outflow devices for injection wells, which aim to autonomously manage injection such as in high permeability streaks in the reservoir that cause rapid water recycling.”
Another technology is around autonomous inflow devices for gas fields. It is a well-known phenomenon that gas wells suffer water breakthrough as much as oil wells do, but in gas wells, the effect can be even more detrimental to production. “Our team have therefore developed an AICV that only allows in gas and condensate but shuts off water,” Brent says, and we plan to deploy this in a well soon.
The company is also tackling the unconventional space. “The typical norm today is to have no inflow control for long horizontals in unconventional production at all,” Brent says, “but that is now changing as we have embarked on some projects in North America where we have retrofitted some old wells. We are also working on new projects with strategic partners where our valves manage production straight after stimulation.”
In addition, the company developed an inflow control valve for thermal late-life SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) applications as well, to extract more oil from the in-situ oil sands in Canada. In these late-life stages, operators inject non-compressible gases rather than steam because the reservoir is already heated up. The main reason for installing our autonomous valves in these settings in this late-life scenario is driven by the risk of the gases finding a quick way into the producer, bypassing the oil. Our valves subsequently make sure that these gases stay in the reservoir rather than being produced too quickly,” Brent says.
Saying no
It is not a coincidence that Norway is the birthplace of InflowControl. “Norway is one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to recovery factors,” says Brent. “This is really down to having companies like state-owned Petoro and governing body Norwegian Offshore Directorate, who have incentivised the focused use of technology for decades.”
“However, Norway seems a bit of an outlier when it comes to the focused approach of field management discipline,” admits Brent, meaning that there are significant opportunities for the company elsewhere. “Yet, we do say no to about a third of the calls for projects we get,” he says. “The reason is that our technology may not fit all applications, and we don’t focus on quick wins. Our approach is to better understand the entire field and deploy our autonomous valves customized for each reservoirs properties in such a way that it makes sense for longer-term reservoir management.”
Norway is one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to recovery factors
And to gain that insight into the reservoir, the company employs a large group of reservoir engineers. “I don’t know another tech company that has more reservoir engineers in their subsurface department dedicated and focused on only reservoir management,” says Brent. “We are roughly sixty people now, and ten of them are reservoir engineers optimising the design of our AICV completions in relation to the characteristics of the reservoir. It is absolutely paramount to understand the field and to understand our customers’ needs.”
So how does the future and producing the next 50 % of our world’s reserves look?
“I’m exceptionally bullish about the future,” concludes Brent. “We see so many opportunities, especially because reservoir monitoring is becoming more common place. Producing the next 50 % will be very different from the first, but I see tremendous opportunity to do it with smart technology.”
This article is the second in a series of three.
Find the first one “Producing the next 50 % of the world’s oil reserves” here.
and the third one “No Concern at All” – The Economist’s View, A conversation with Carole Nakhle (London) here.
