SPE-202349-MS

Pressure Wave Downhole Communication Technique for Smart Zonal Water

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Injection

Quanbin Wang and Deli Jia, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, CNPC; Gaixing Hu,
Oil& Gas Engineering Institute of ChangqingOilfield, CNPC; Fuchao Sun and Jiqun Zhang, Research Institute of
Petroleum Exploration and Development, CNPC

Copyright 2020, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition originally scheduled to be held in Perth, Australia, 20 - 22
October 2020. Due to COVID-19 the physical event was postponed until 17 - 19 November 2020 and was changed to a virtual event. The official proceedings were
published online on 12 November 2020.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect
any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written
consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may
not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Zonal water injection technique has been proved an effective method for enhanced oil recovery of multi-
layer heterogeneous oil reservoirs. Higher zonal injection qualified rate is an important index for improving
the effect of waterflooding development, so frequent monitoring and adjusting flowrate of separated layer
is necessary. However, when traditional zonal water injection techniques are used, periodic flowrate testing
and adjusting are realized by an armored cable with steel wire, which lead to a large number of testing work.
This paper proposes a smart zonal water injection system based on pressure wave downhole communication
technique. In this system, an integrated water distributor and a wellhead control device with pressure sensor
and flow regulated assembly is developed. Continuous pressure wave can be generated by controlling the
opening of downhole water distributor and wellhead control valve, and the pressure changes in wellbore
can be monitored by sensors. Based on the time shift keying coding and decoding techniques, control
command and downhole monitoring data are loaded into the continuous pressure wave. The pressure
wave communication between wellhead control valve and downhole water distributor can be realized
with injection water as the medium. With the help of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Internet
technology, the smart system can also be used for remote monitoring of downhole parameters and remote
regulating of zonal flowrate. The smart technique for zonal water injection wells has been implemented in 89
wells in China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Changqing M1 Block. Testing and adjusting work
by testing vehicle in traditional zonal water injection technology is eliminated. The results of 27 tracked
wells show that the maximum effective distance of pressure wave communication is 2879 m, the minimum
pressure change that can be identified is 0.5 MPa, and the time of uploading a flowrate data takes 70 min.
The effect of waterflooding development is improved after applying the smart technique. Zonal injection
qualified rate is improved from 63.6% to 90.3%. Reservoir water absorption thickness is increased from
18.5 m to 19.4 m. Reserves producing degree of waterflooding development is improved from 68.7% to
70.2%. Natural decline rate is reduced from 5.2% to 4.8%. This paper illustrates a technology of pressure
wave downhole communication for smart zonal water injection and an integrated case study, which can
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obtain vast amounts of real-time pressure data, and help reservoir engineers adjust development plan of
waterflooding reservoirs. In addition, it offers a methodology for downhole wireless control.
Key Words: pressure wave, downhole wireless communication, zonal water injection, smart water
distributor

Introduction

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In China’s oilfields, 92% of the reservoirs are continental clastic rocks with strong vertical heterogeneity
and weaker formation energy[1-2]. Over years of waterflooding development, most of the old oilfields have
formed dominant channels of water flow in the reservoirs, and demonstrated ineffective and inefficient
circulation of injected water, resulting in large liquid production, low oil production rate and poor
development effect, etc. Zonal water injection, one of the key technologies to realize the sustainable and
stable production of oilfields, enables effective and sufficient water injection in multi-layer heterogeneous
reservoirs. At present, CNPC mainly adopts cable measuring and adjusting zonal injection technology
with bridge eccentric or concentric distributor, which relies on downhole electric testing and adjusting tool
conveyed via steel cable. A water injection regulating valve and a variety of sensors are integrated in the
testing and adjusting tool to control on line the water injection volume at specific interval and collect the
water injection parameters such as flowrate, pressure and temperature. This technology greatly improves the
testing and adjusting efficiency of water injectors. However, some deficiencies still exist. On one hand, the
interval time of testing and adjusting cycle of water injectors is long, making it impossible to maintain a high
qualified rate of water injection. According to statistics, the qualified rate of zonal water injection dropped
to 65.3% in Daqing Oilfield after 4 months, and dropped to 55.6% in Changqing Oilfield after 3 months. On
the other hand, the total number of zonal water injection wells is increasing year by year, the segmentation
of single well is becoming more and more precise, and the testing and adjusting frequency is gradually
increasing, which lead to the doubling of the operational workload and costs [3]. Based on the pressure
wave downhole communication technology, the pressure wave controlled smart zonal water injection system
wasdeveloped. This system can realize wireless monitoring of interval pressure and flowrate and wireless
regulation of water injection volume in zonal water injectors. The system has been applied in M1 Block of
CNPC Changqing Oilfield, proving an improved waterflooding development effect.

Technical principle
The pressure wave controlled downhole zonal water injection system based on the idea of smart zonal water
injection through pressure wave wireless communication includes ground control box, wellhead control
valve, downhole smart water distributor, and packer (Fig.1). The regular opening and closing of wellhead
control valve and flowrate control valve of the downhole smart water distributor will produce varying
pressure wave. The pressure wave generated by the wellhead control valve is received by the pressure
sensor of the downhole water distributor, and the pressure wave generated by the downhole water distributor
is received by the wellhead pressure sensor. Through signal modulation and coding, the surface control
command and downhole monitoring data are loaded to the pressure wave. Then, with the injected water
as the medium, a wireless two-way communication is realized between the wellhead control valve and
the downhole water distributor, so that the downhole injection data is monitored and the water injection
volume of the interval is adjusted. Moreover, Internet and GPRS are integrated to realize remote monitoring
and controlling in the office, without the necessity of testing vehicle. Clearly, the technology achieves data
monitoring and cycle adjustment, independent of the field activity and environment, so a stable qualified
rate of zonal water injection can be ensured.
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Figure 1—Schematic diagram of pressure wave controlled smart zonal water injection system

Pressure wave coding and decoding technology

The pressure wave should be modulated and coded before it is loaded with the control information and
downhole monitoring data. Like electronic control signal, the pressure wave signal is modulated by On-Off
Keying (OOK). When the modulated digital signal is "1", the carrier wave is transmitted; when it is “0”,
the carrier waveis not transmitted, or the number “0” is transmitted. In order to improve the transmission
efficiency and reduce the bit error rate, the time shift OOKcoding technology is used.
The pressure wave signal loaded with control information is transmitted downward with the coding
scheme as: wake-up bit + write command + interval information + interval opening + end bit or wake-
up bit + interval information bit + read pressure bit (or read flowrate bit if omitted) + end bit. After the
smart water distributor at the target interval obtains the written opening control command, it can control
the zonal flowrate. After the water distributor obtains the command to read the water injection parameters,
the data information to be uploaded follows the pressure wave coding scheme as: start bit + pressure
information bit (or flowrateinformation bit) + end bit. Target interval = number of high-level information
bits atthe interval–1; pressure value or flowratevalue of each quantile = number of pressure information bits
or flowrateinformation bits in high-level cycle. Taking a set of behind-choke pressure at the second interval
as an example, the coding and decoding scheme is shown in Fig.2. The read behind-choke pressure at the
second interval is 30.5MPa.

Figure 2—An example of pressure wave coding and decoding scheme

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Design of wellhead control valve

The wellhead control valve integrates electric control valve, pressure sensor, flowmeter and ground
controller. When control command is sent from ground to underground, after the ground pressure wave
controller receives the remote or field control command, the control module of the ground controller queries
and confirms the pressure pulse code of the control command information, and controls the switch of the
electric control valve according to the corresponding code. If the inflow electric control valve is closed,

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the water supply to the wellbore is terminated, and the low voltage wave code (low level) is established. If
the inflow electric control valve is opened, the water supplyto the wellbore is started, and the high voltage
wave code (high level) is established. As the peak value difference of the pressure wave pulsation produced
by the opening and closing of the downholesmart water distributor is small, and the signal attenuation
caused by long-distance downhole transmission is large, the pressure wave signal received by the ground
controller is weak. For decoding the pressure wave signal transmitted from underground, the filtering and
signal amplifying circuits are designed. According to the time sequence characteristics of pressure pulse, the
decoding system of ground controller restores the signal to data information according to communication
coding protocol.
In order to establish the stable signal of pressure wave communication and reduce the flowratefluctuation
during normal water injection, the electric control valve can be set as constant flow, constant pressure or
opening modesby the ground controller. The constant pressure mode is adopted when the control command
is sent down from the ground, and the constant flow mode is used for normal water injection. The constant
flowor constant pressure is maintained steady by virtue of the flowmeter and pressure gauge which monitor
thewellhead flowrateand pressure parameters in real time manner and the electric control valve which
continuously receives the value from the sensor for comparison and convergence. The constant flow mode
and constant pressure mode are mutually exclusivein view of function switching, that is, constant flow
cannot exist under the constant pressure mode, and constant pressure cannot exist under the constant
flow mode. Laboratory tests show that in the constant pressure (constant flow) mode, the pressure (flow)
converges to realize pressure (flow) stabilization, and the delay time of pressure value at the maximum
output is about 40 seconds, which meets the demand of pressure wave communication. The test curves of
valve in constant pressure mode is shown in Fig.3.

Figure 3—Test curves of electric control valve in constant pressure mode

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Design of smart water distributor

Smart water distributor is the key tool of this technology. In China"s oilfields, 27/8inch tubing is commonly
used, and the water distributor needs to maintainwell logging access. In this paper, the bridge eccentric zonal
water injection is used to adjust flowrate (Fig.4). The water distributor is composed of upper joint, lower
joint (connecting the strings), three assemblies (flowrateregulating assembly, flowrate measuring assembly
and pressure measuring assembly), and outer steelbody.

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Figure 4—Schematic diagram of water distributor

The water injected into a single layer enters into the cavity of the downhole smart water distributor
through the central flow channel, flows through the differential pressure flowmeter, enters the
flowrateregulating valve (axial water nozzle or plane water nozzle), and finally sweeps into the formation.
The flowrateregulating assembly includes a battery pack, a drive motor, a deceleration mechanism and a
flowrate regulating valve. According to the single-layer injection flowratesignal measured by the differential
pressure flowmeter, the opening of the regulating valve driven by motor is controlled to adjust the single-
layer injection volume. The flowrateregulation and control module not only adjusts the water injection
volume according to the ground control command, but also automaticallyadjusts the flowrate. In other
words, when the error of single-layer injection volume detected by the flowmeter is greater than the specified
error, the motor is automatically controlled to adjust the opening of water nozzle, so as to improve the
qualified rate of zonal water injection.

Design of high-pressure continuous adjustable water nozzle

The control valve port for water injection is divided into axial water nozzle and plane water nozzle. The
axial water nozzle is simple, and can be made of ceramic material for better wear resistance. However, the
flow regulation speed of the axial water nozzle is slow and the pressure wave wireless communication rate
is relatively low. In contrast, the plane water nozzle realizes flowrateregulation through the rotation of the
moving valve, and its flowrateregulation is fast. Hence, for purpose of more efficient communication, the
plane water nozzle is generally selected. The designedplane water nozzle is shown in Fig.5. The equivalent
diameter of nozzle at full opening is 8.54mm. The opening is set at 0–16 positions, and eachposition
represented by 5 data bits. With this design, stepless regulation of single-layer water injection volume is
realized.
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Figure 5—Fixed valve (left) and moving valve (right) of plane water nozzle

Field application
The reservoir in Bai 153 demonstration area of Changqing Oilfield is turbidite slump deposits, represented
by turbidite channelsedimentary microfacies. The sandstone is mainly arkose and lithic arkose, and the
sandbodies are distributed in NE-SW direction [4]. The development horizons are Chang 631 and Chang
632. The effective paysare 20m thick, with the porosity of 11.5% and the permeability if 0.41mD.
Waterflooding development in this area is challenging in several aspects: (1) intra-layer and inter-layer
reservoir heterogeneity is strong, leading to fast decline of the qualified rate of zonal water injection – the
average qualified rateof water injection of several wells with bridge concentriczonal water injection dropped
from 100% to 56.8% in four months after testing and adjusting; (2) the testing and adjustingactivity becomes
increasingly effort- and cost-consuming, as the number of zonal water injectors increases year by year; and
(3) only less data are acquired through the 4-month testing and adjustingfor the bridge concentric zonal
water injection, which can only help understand the transient zonal water injection performance, but not
support the real-time optimization and adjustment of reservoir development plan.

Figure 6—Test result of demonstration areain 2016-2018

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Result
In 2016-2018, the pressure wave controlled zonal water injection was applied in 89 wells, accounting for
70% of total zonal water injectors in this area, and corresponding to the maximum well depth of 2,879m.
The effects of zonal water injection in 62 small layers of 27 wells were analyzed.
1. The pressure wave controlled zonal water injection technique can maintain higherqualified rate of
zonal water injection. When the cable measuring and adjusting zonal injection technology with

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bridge concentric distributorwas used, it was foundafter 3 months of testing and adjusting that there
were 38 unqualified zonal injection intervals, accounting for 61.3% of total intervals. Among them,
22 intervals were over-injected in the restricted section and 16 intervals were under-injected in
the enhanced water injection section, with a zonal water injection qualified rate of 63.6%.When
the pressure wave controlled zonal water injectionis adopted the downhole automatic testing and
adjustingwas realized and the 15-day real-time manual remote interventionwasconducted, indicating
the qualified rate of zonalwater injection maintained at 90.3% for a long time. The qualified rates of
zonalwater injection by two techniques are compared in Fig.7.
2. The average reservoir water absorption thickness is increased from 18.5m to 19.4m. Reserves
producing degree of waterflooding development is improved from 68.7% to 70.2%. Natural decline
rate is reduced from 5.2% to 4.8%. The variation of reserves producing degree of waterflooding
development is shown in Fig.8.
3. The formation pressure is maintained at a higher level. The distribution of formation pressure is
increased from 96.7% to 97.4% after testing, 0.6MPa higher than that of the whole Bai153 block. The
distribution of formation pressure in the test area is shown in Fig.9.

Figure 7—Qualified rates of twozonalwater injection techniques under different testing and adjusting cycles
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Figure 8—Reserves producing degree of waterflooding development

Figure 9—Distribution of formation pressure (left) before and (right) after testing

Case study
Well Guan A was completed in May 2016, with well depth of 2,130 m and deviation of 20º. Water was
injected in two intervals:at 13m3/d in the upper interval (2,075–2,082m), and at 17 m3/d in the lower interval
(2,085–2,089m).
1. Single-layer flowratemonitoring and transmission are realized, and the qualified rate of zonal water
injection is maintained at a high level. During zonal water injection, a remote command is sent to
read the flowrateat the second interval (wake-up bit + interval information bit + end bit). The high
level of the flowrateinformation bit fed back by the downhole smart water distributor contains three
groups. The time of high level is 1T, 6T and 9T respectively (T represents one high level cycle), that is,
the flowrate at the second interval is 16.9m3/d. Therefore, the injection allocation error at the second
interval is only 0.6%. The pressure wave for two-way communication is shown in Fig.10.
2. Remote adjustment of downhole flowrate is realized. Remote command issent to close the second
interval (wake-up bit + write command + interval information + interval opening + end bit) and read
the flowrate at the first interval. After the second interval is closed, the transientflowrate monitored
by the surface flowmeter is 30m3/d, and the flowrate obtained by pressure wave communication is
30.7m3/d. The error of downhole differential pressure flowmeter is 0.7% FS (Full scale). The pressure
wave of downhole two-way communication is shown in Fig.10.
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Figure 10—Pressure wave of downhole two-way communication

Conclusion
Waterflooding is a main EOR technique used in China’s oilfields. As old oilfields enter the stage of
development with high water cut and high depletion, additional reserves are mainlydiscovered from low-
permeability reservoirs. Waterflooding development is performed with an increasingly complex injector-
producer pattern. A finer zonal water injection technology is required to ensure continuous and stable
production with higher quality and efficiency. The pressure wave controlledsmart zonal water injection
technology, which is based on pressure wave communication andadopts the ground control valve and
downholesmart water distributor as signal generators, can realize the monitoring and regulating of pressure
and flowratein downholeinterval. This technology can complete zonal water injection testing and adjusting
without testing vehicle, enabling the oilfield to maintain a higher qualified rate of water injection for a long
time. With the data of downhole zonal water injectionobtained in a short cycle, reservoir engineers can
makesmart optimization and analysis of oilfield waterflooding. The smart zonal water injection based on
wireless communication has become an inevitable choice in practice.

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