FLOW ENHANCEMENT

- PART 1: INTRO TO WELL STIMULATION

- PART 2: MATRIX ACIDIZING
- PART 3: HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

by Mohd Fahmi Mustapah

Senior Production Technologist
Majnoon Asset Technical Team (ATT)

19th Jul. 2016

Shell Iraq Petroleum Development B.V.

 PART 2.3: PLACEMENT/DIVERSION
TECHNIQUES

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 OUTLINE

• Part 2.1
• Introduction
• Candidate Selection
• Matrix Acidizing of Sandstones
• Part 2.2
• Matrix Acidizing of Carbonates
• Part 2.3
• Placement/Diversion Techniques
• Part 2.4
• STIM2001 Tool

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 PLACEMENT/DIVERSION TECHNIQUES

Introduction
• Determination of the proper fluid placement method is a key factor in acid treatment
design in both sandstones and carbonates.
• Some method of placing or diverting acid is required to distribute acid across the
zone or zones of interest.
• The problem of fluid placement is magnified in horizontal wells because of the
length of the interval.
• Damage, depending often on fluid-rock interactions, may be unevenly distributed
along the length of the interval.
• Also, the natural reservoir permeability may vary considerably, with substantial
contrasts.
• In such an environment, matrix stimulation tends to remove or bypass the damage
that is easiest to reach, and the fluid invades the zone where it is least required.

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 PLACEMENT/DIVERSION TECHNIQUES

• To achieve full damage removal, acid must be diverted to the sections that accept
acid the least – those that are most damaged.
• There are various placement and diversion techniques available for matrix acidizing,
viz.:
• mechanical methods
• chemical diverter techniques
• diversion with fluids
• pumping strategy
• In a lot of treatments, particularly in long horizontal hole sections, combinations of
the above methods are being used, like coiled tubing for placement in conjunction
with foamed fluids for diversion.
• The placement and diversion efficiency of mechanical methods (ballsealers),
particulates and fluids can be simulated with the flow simulator of STIM2001.

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

• These techniques use mechanical means

to isolate a particular zone for injection, or
selective placement of stimulation fluids.
• Mechanical placement methods are
usually more reliable than other
techniques, although at high costs.
• A further disadvantage is that they are not
applicable to gravel-packed wells and
wells where zonal isolation does not exist
through effective cementation of the
production casing (bad cementation,
horizontal wells completed as open hole
or with slotted liner).

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Gravel Packed (GP) Completion 6
 MECHANICAL METHODS

Packers and bridge plugs

• Complete zonal isolation can be obtained in a perforated completion by packing-off a
section of the completion interval, for instance by a combination of a retrievable
packer and bridge plug, or a straddle assembly.
• This effective method is very expensive, however, and may require a rig.
• A more appropriate means of hydraulically setting and retrieving such tools is with
the use of coiled tubing.
• The perforation intervals should include blank sections to allow setting of packers.
• In recent years, a coiled tubing-conveyed, inflatable, selective injection straddle
packer assembly has been developed.
• This tool can be used for through-tubing selective stimulation jobs through casing
perforations, and for open-hole selective stimulation jobs.

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MECHANICAL METHODS
Bridge Plug

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MECHANICAL METHODS

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MECHANICAL METHODS

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

• The straddled length is 5 m. It can be used for:

• acid stimulation of specific intervals with optimum volumes of fluid
• treatment of highly inhomogeneous formations
• When hydraulically inflatable packers are used as a straddle tool, it is possible to treat
three intervals (below, between and above the packers) without moving the
completion.
• Although this is an effective means of obtaining excellent control on coverage, it is
expensive and time consuming.
• For horizontal wells, which frequently have been completed as open hole completion
with slotted liner, external casing packers (ECPs) may help improve wellbore fluid
placement by compartmentalizing the annulus.

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MECHANICAL METHODS

Inflatable Packer

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

Coiled tubing (CT)

• CT is a very useful tool for improving acid placement.
• The use of CT is often considered for the placement of matrix treatment fluids in
horizontal wells, both in cased and open hole completions.
• The combination of employing CT and a (temporarily crosslinked) gelled acid or
foam as a diverting agent, has proved effective in carbonate formations in horizontal
wells.
• CT can be used to spot fluids along the zone, while drawing or reciprocating the
tubing along the zone of interest.
• Other CT-based methods in matrix acidizing of horizontal wells involve either
circulating up the CT/tubing annulus, or bullheading acid or an inert fluid along this
annulus.
• Combining coiled tubing with straddle packer assemblies for selective zone
placement is a standard method for improving zonal coverage.

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

• Moreover, the use of CT with a jetting tool provides an excellent means of

establishing direct communication of the acid with the formation face in long open
hole sections.
• This can be very effective for the removal of mud filtercake or for the cleaning up of
installed screens.

Treatment of a
limited interval
with coiled tubing
through a packer
setting in a
horizontal well
section

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

Ballsealers
• Ballsealers are small rubber-lined plastic balls.
• They are available in a density range of 0.9 – 1.4 g/cm3.
• Ballsealers with densities less than 1.0 are called buoyant ballsealers or floaters.
• Ballsealers with specific gravity greater than water or acid are called sinkers, for
obvious reasons.
• Newer, conventional ballsealers are of the floater or neutral density variety.
• Older, conventional ballsealers are of the sinker variety.
• Ballsealers can be used in both acidizing and fracturing treatments.
• This diversion method has been successfully applied both in vertical and horizontal
perforated wells.
• However, in horizontal wells, ballsealer efficiency is influenced by hole angle, ball
density, injection rate, perforation orientation, density and number.
• In horizontal wells, neutral buoyancy balls should be used, if at all.
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MECHANICAL METHODS
Ball Sealers

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MECHANICAL METHODS
Ball Sealers

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 MECHANICAL METHODS

• Buoyant balls have a higher seating efficiency than non-buoyant balls.

• However, buoyant balls have the disadvantage that they will be produced back to
surface.
• As a compromise, the density of the balls can be chosen such that they will be
buoyant in the treatment fluid, but have a density that is greater than the produced
fluids.
• The balls will then sink to the sump, and can be left at the bottom of the well.
• As to the quality control on density of commercial ballsealers, it has been observed
that on average 20 – 30% of the ballsealers deviate more than the 5% scatter,
specified by the manufacturers.
• Especially for the 0.9 – 1.0 g/cm3 density ballsealers, such deviations cannot be
tolerated.
• It is therefore suggested for field treatments, to check the density of the balls on-site
by immersing them in fluids with the desired densities.

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 CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

• Chemical diverters, which are materials insoluble in acid, but highly soluble in water
or hydrocarbons, have been used either to form a thin, low-permeability filtercake at
the formation face, or to reduce the injectivity of high-permeability zones or
perforations, with the injection of a viscous polymer plug.
• The first technique has been found to be more effective and can provide faster clean-
up.
• It has prevailed over the viscous slug technique.
• Diverting particulates must be soluble in either the production or injection fluids.
• Having acted as diverters, they should allow a rapid and complete clean-up.
• Diverting agents can be classified, according to their particle size, as bridging agents
or particulate diverters.

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 CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

Bridging and plugging agents

• These diverting agents consist of relatively large-size particles, ranging from 10/20 to
100 mesh.
• They are used as diverters in carbonate formations, where natural fractures are
common.
• However, their effectiveness is limited by the relatively high permeability of the
cakes they create.
• When effective diversion is required in fractured zones, a slug of bridging agent is
injected first, followed by the treating fluid containing a diverting agent.
• Bridging agents are: inert materials such as silica sand; water-soluble bridging agents,
including rock salt and benzoic acid; oil-soluble resins (OSRs), naphtalene flakes and
beads made of wax-polymer blends.

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 CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

Particulate diverters
• These are characterized by very small particle sizes, well below 0.004 in. in diameter.
• Both water-soluble (fine grade of benzoic acid, or salts) and oil-soluble (blends of
hydrocarbon resins) particulate diverters are available.
• Sodium containing solids (salt, sodium benzoate, etc.) should never be used as a
diverter in hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatments, or before HF treatments, since it may
lead to sodium fluosilicate precipitation.
• The use of particulate diversion material for matrix acidizing treatments in long
horizontal open holes would require so many diverter stages, that such treatment
would become prohibitively expensive.
• In such a case, the preferred diverting technique consists of pumping viscous banks
or foam into sections of high fluid intake.

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 CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

Recommendation
• The various types of chemical diverter do not require zonal isolation to work.
• However, their main disadvantage is that, if they are not removed by the produced
fluids, they can cause impairment too.
• In most cases clean-up is rather slow.
• Many cases of slow clean-up after diverted acid stimulation treatments may be
attributed to the diverter not (completely) dissolving in the back-produced fluids.
• Nevertheless, chemical diverting agents, in particular benzoic acid, can be used
successfully, provided a number of design rules are observed:
 In general, we suggest to use straight benzoic acid (rather than salts of benzoic
acid), since it is soluble in formation water and oil, and it sublimates in gas.

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 CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

 The effective downhole particle size of benzoic acid is influenced by the type
and order of addition of surfactants and inhibitors to the treatment fluids. The
preferred order of mixing is surfactant, inhibitor and finally, the diverter. Acidic
slurries prepared in this way show reasonably stable particles for 1 – 2 hours.
 In order to maintain the permeability of the diverter cake, continuous addition of
benzoic acid throughout the treatment is preferred.
 Cake build-up is a function of concentration, inflow profile, length of perforated
interval, shot density, injection rate, etc.
• Other types of chemical diverting agents, e.g. oil soluble resins, follow similar rules
as far as cake build-up is concerned.
• However, their solubility in crude oil should be checked carefully in core flooding
experiments.

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CHEMICAL DIVERTER TECHNIQUES

Stability of benzoic acid diverter cake in hydrochloric acid

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

Foamed fluids
• Foams have been used for acid diversion since at least the 1960s.
• Foam can be injected as a spacer between treatment stages (multi-stage process) or,
alternatively, part or all of the treating acid can be injected as foam (one-stage
process).
• Foam diversion has probably the potential for wider application in horizontal wells,
than any of the diversion methods discussed above.
• Moreover, it is useful in gravel pack completions, where particulates do not pass well
through the pack or screen slots.
• Generally, foam is more effective in higher permeability formations with deeper
damage.
• Also, foam diversion is probably most useful in gas well acidizing.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• While the behavior of foam in porous media is not fully understood, the most
common view is that the diversion of foam is based on the phenomenon that the
liquid films that separate the bubbles in a foam, enormously reduce gas mobility in
the formation; the low-mobility gas in turn drives down liquid saturation and thereby
reduces liquid relative permeability.
• As a result, the foam as a whole has a low mobility in rock and, like viscosified
fluids, foam increases the resistance to flow into a given interval.
• Moreover, the reduction in mobility is higher in high-permeability rock than in low-
permeability rock, resulting in efficient diversion.
• The percentage of gas contained in the foam is referred to as the foam quality.
• For example, foam consisting of 70% gas (typically nitrogen) is a 70-quality foam.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• Foamed acids are operationally and logistically more complex to use than viscosified
acids.
• They require extra equipment and a liquid nitrogen supply.
• With tubing head pressure limitations, it is not always possible to use foam due to
high friction in the wellbore or coiled tubing, combined with low hydrostatic head.
• Furthermore, they have less dissolving power (per unit volume of acid).
• The high gas content of foam, whilst improving clean-up, also in the presence of
fines, makes its application more difficult to control.
• Since foam is compressible, pressure variations alter the foam properties that govern
the flow division across the interval.
• Hence, variations in the surface pressure do not directly reflect downhole
performance; there is presently no experimentally engineering model of foam flow in
porous media that can be used for design or control purposes.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• Finally, a problem with the use of foams in horizontal wells is posed by the horizontal
nature of the flow: foam, being a two-phase system, may tend to segregate while
flowing along the long horizontal section.
• This can lead to diverter hold-up at the heel of the well, or to preferential treatment of
the lower or upper part of the wellbore.
• Moreover, in long horizontal sections the use of foam may become impractical in
view of the large volumes required to cover the entire zone.
• In those cases the choice of a diverting agent is narrowed down to the use of e.g.
gelled acid.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

Viscous fluids
• When using viscosified fluids, viscous pills can be injected in between acid flushes
(alternating stages).
• In order to work, a number of prerequisites should be fulfilled:
• An adequate volume of polymer must be placed in the unimpaired zone.
• The subsequent acid must have direct access to the impairment.
• The polymer must not cause impairment and must be easily removed by the
produced fluids.
• In practice, these requirements, especially the latter, are difficult to meet.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

Gelled acid
• A better alternative is to gel the acid to be injected, itself.
• The requirements for successful application of gelled acids are:
• the gelled acid should have sufficiently high viscosity at the treatment
temperature, for a sufficient length of time,
• the gelled acid should lose its viscosity after the treatment, to promote rapid
clean-up.
• Using acid viscosified with polymer, instead of conventional (low-viscosity) acid,
can improve placement along the wellbore interval for e.g. filtercake removal
treatments, by reducing the leakoff during placement of the fluids over the wellbore
interval and ensuring that the entire interval is contacted by acid.
• Since gelled acid is a shear-thinning (non-Newtonian) fluid, its viscosity increases
further away from the wellbore, thereby blocking the following acid and diverting it
to other, less permeable zones.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• In such a way the gelled acid acts as a self-diverting system.

• Biopolymer acid gels satisfy both the above criteria and act as self-diverting acid
systems.
• This low leakoff behaviour also significantly reduces the acid volume required to
achieve coverage along the complete length of the wellbore, compared to low-
viscosity acids.
• Moreover, this shear-thinning behaviour also has the advantage of enabling the
operator to pump the viscous acid at relatively high rates.
• In the field, both continuous injection of gelled acid (possibly after a low-viscosity
preflush), and alternating acid/gelled acid slugs have been attempted.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• Furthermore, acidizing treatments can use any combination of pumping into tubing,
coiled tubing and CT/tubing annulus.
• The CT can be moved along the wellbore to increase coverage of the wellbore
interval.
• Gelled acid treatment techniques involve either circulating to surface or
injecting/overflushing the acid into the formation.
• Typically, prior to the treatment, the wellbore is filled with (low-viscosity) fluid, e.g.
completion brine, which is displaced either out of the annulus or into the formation
during the treatment.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

• Furthermore, acidizing treatments can use any combination of pumping into tubing,
coiled tubing and CT/tubing annulus.
• The CT can be moved along the wellbore to increase coverage of the wellbore
interval.
• Gelled acid treatment techniques involve either circulating to surface or
injecting/overflushing the acid into the formation.
• Typically, prior to the treatment, the wellbore is filled with (low-viscosity) fluid, e.g.
completion brine, which is displaced either out of the annulus or into the formation
during the treatment.

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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

Emulsified acid
• The use of emulsions in carbonate formations, with acid (typically HCl) as the
internal phase is one of the best ways to retard the acid reaction rate.
• Their delayed nature will create deeper acid penetration and wormholes.
• A retardation factor of 14 to 19 times compared to conventional HCl, will bypass
deeper damage, especially in reservoirs with natural fractures/fissures with significant
drilling or completion fluid losses.
• The high viscosity (10-100 times the bottomhole viscosity of HCl) helps control fluid
loss, allows efficient and more uniform placement and diversion along a (horizontal)
section, in cases where permeability contrasts may create high permeability channels
or thief zones.
• The main advantage of emulsified acid therefore, is a deep penetration, particularly in
heterogeneous carbonate formations, with zones of low injectivity.
• However, disadvantages are that the mixing is more complex, and the stability of the
emulsion is difficult to maintain, particularly at high temperatures.
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 DIVERSION WITH FLUIDS

In-situ crosslinked acid

• Other systems that have been proposed and successfully used for viscous acid
diversion in carbonate formations, consist of acid (HCl) mixed with a gelling agent
and a pH-sensitive crosslinker, i.e. in-situ crosslinked acid.
• Initial spending of the acid during leakoff and wormholing, will produce a rise in pH
to a value of 2-3, which initiates a significant increase in viscosity due to
crosslinking.
• The crosslinked gel will effectively stop any further fluid invasion, and divert
subsequent acid stages to different parts of the interval.
• The crosslink will break upon further spending, and at a pH value above 4 the
viscosity of the fluid will return to its original value.
• Such a pH-sensitive crosslinked gel is ideally suited for acid diversion in long
intervals, and treatments have been successfully performed in long horizontal open
hole completions.

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 PUMPING STRATEGY

Bullheading
• Bullheading acid is most likely to generate large leakoff zones, which take all of the
stimulation fluids.
• It is not a recommended substitute for proper placement with e.g. coiled tubing,
especially in horizontal wells.
• Here, it too often results in the acid being spent near the vertical section of the well,
which then accepts even more stimulation fluids.
• Hence, massive leakoff zones develop, especially in carbonates.
• Field results indicate that bullheaded treatments without diversion or placement
techniques may result in only 5-15% of the interval length being treated.

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 PUMPING STRATEGY

Bullheading with diversion

• Bullheading with continuous diversion (foamed, gelled or viscosified acid) may
greatly increase the efficiency of the use of acid along the wellbore.
• Simulations have indicated, however, that bullheading of acid with continuous
diversion in carbonates, may result in poor coverage beyond 100 to 150 m.
• Apparently the acid rapidly creates a thief zone at the entrance of the interval, and
conventional chemical diversion techniques become ineffective.
• Bullhead treatments with foam stages have indicated that only two stages of foam
may be effective for acid diversion.
• From treating pressure data obtained from such treatments, indications are that where
more than two foam stages were pumped, no additional pressure increase (indicative
of diversion) during the treatment was observed.
• Similar observations have been made in wells where rock salt or benzoic acid flakes
were used for diverter stages.

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 PUMPING STRATEGY

MAPDIR technique
• The MAPDIR (Maximised Pressure Differential and Injection Rates) technique,
developed by Paccaloni of Agip, has been promoted as the best means of assuring
sufficient acid placement in all zones during matrix stimulation treatments.
• MAPDIR applies wherever Darcy’s law holds.
• In practice, the method consists of injecting acid at the highest possible matrix
treatment rate, at a constant bottom hole pressure, slightly below the fracturing
pressure.
• This requires continual increases in the injection rate as the acid removes damage and
thereby increases the well injectivity.
• A high success rate has been reported with this technique, with success quantified as
a large reduction in the skin factor.

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 PUMPING STRATEGY

• The MAPDIR technique does clearly result in the highest possible injection rate into
low-injectivity intervals, while any of the other diversion techniques may even
reduce injectivity into low-injectivity intervals.
• So, in this sense, MAPDIR achieves the goal of any diversion method – to ensure
complete acid coverage of all zones.
• The MAPDIR technique is especially suited for diversion in matrix treatments of
unfractured carbonates, and it has been successfully used in horizontal wells.
• In carbonates, the acid reaction rate is usually high and mass transport limits the
overall acid-spending rate.
• The result of the acid/rock dissolution process therefore strongly depends on the acid
flow rate.
• When acid is pumped into a carbonate formation that contains zones with different
degrees of damage, the zones with the least damage will accept the largest amount of
acid, and these can be stimulated effectively.

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 PUMPING STRATEGY

• When acid is pumped into a carbonate formation that contains zones with different
degrees of damage, the zones with the least damage will accept the largest amount of
acid, and these can be stimulated effectively.
• A lower amount of acid flows into the more severely damaged zones.
• An increase in the total injection rate will result in higher flow rates into all zones.
• In particular, the zones with severe damage can benefit; the increased flow rate may
induce a transition from a compact dissolution regime without much stimulation, to a
wormholing regime, with effective stimulation.
• A drawback of the method is, however, that it results in more acid than is necessary
being injected into high-injectivity intervals.
• In addition, the benefits of this method are being reduced when the attainable bottom
hole pressure is less than the desired value, because of limitations in surface pressure
or pumping capacity, or because of friction losses in long horizontal sections.

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 SPE 173711

A Novel Polymer-Assisted Emulsified-Acid System Improves the Efficiency of Carbonate

Matrix Acidizing
In highly heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs, several acid systems were used to enhance acid
diversion during matrix-acidizing treatments. Viscosified acid with polymer increases the
viscosity of the acid system to improve the wellbore coverage. However, the injection of such
acid at low rates had a negative effect on the spending rate and starts filter-cake formation, which
inhibits the wormhole growth. On the other hand, relatively low-viscosity emulsified acid is
diffusion-retarded, which makes it an effective wormholing agent at the low injection rates that
occur, for example, in low-permeability or damaged formations. None of the studies in the
literature addresses an acid system that uses both advantages.
The objective of this work was to investigate the behavior and the performance of a new acid
system, polymer-assisted emulsified acid, as a self-diverting acid by conducting viscosity
measurements through coreflood study and acid-diversion experiments. The system was 15 wt%
hydrochloric acid (HCl)-gelled acid emulsified in diesel with a 70:30 acid/diesel volume ratio.

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 SPE 180435

New Viscoelastic Surfactant with Improved Diversion Characteristics for Carbonate Matrix
Acidizing Treatments
Viscoelastic surfactants (VES) have been used to replace polymer-based fluids as effective,
cleaner, and non-damaging viscofying carriers in frac-packing, acid fracturing, and matrix
acidizing. However, several limitations challenge the use of VES-based fluids including: thermal
instability, incompatibility with alcohol-based corrosion inhibitor, and intolerance to the presence
of contaminating iron. This work introduces a new VES-based acid system for diversion in matrix
acidizing that exhibits excellent thermal stability and diversion performance in both low-and high-
temperature conditions.

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 SPE 178937

Selectively Stimulating Oil Production in Mature Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs

Carbonate reservoirs in the southern region of Mexico are deep, hot, and naturally fractured. The
intensity of natural fractures varies greatly. Wells in these formations are typically completed with
multiple perforated intervals, with different producibility and pressure. The oil production is
dependent on the presence of natural fractures, which, with time, are invaded by the aquifer,
leaving the remaining reserves in the low-permeability formation matrix. The challenge when
stimulating these wells is not only to selectively divert the treating fluid away from the natural
fractures, but also to reduce water production from the natural fractures and fissures after the
treatment.
This paper summarizes the laboratory evaluation conducted to validate the use of viscous ZDPM
fluid and the successful application in the field to divert stimulation fluids from the natural
fractures and reduce water production after the treatment.

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 SPE 176100

Relative Permeability Modifier (RPM) as Chemical Diverter in Bullhead Matrix Acidizing

Treatment
Matrix acidizing treatments are widely used for stimulating oil producing wells in the Zamrud
field because of damage caused by scale plugging. The success of this matrix acidizing treatment
depends on the uniform distribution of the treating fluid over the entire hydrocarbon-producing
zone (Hill et al. 1994). Most oil producing wells are not homogeneous and contain sections of
varying permeability—when fluids are pumped into a well, they naturally tend to flow into the
zone with the highest permeability or less damage (Eoff et al. 2004). Being able to completely
acidize the interval is a major problem.
This paper discusses the geological and reservoir parameters of the wells, job design
consideration, and post acidizing results when using RPM as a chemical diversion technique.
Field results show significant improvement of post-stimulation production after combined acid
with RPM systems were implemented in comparison to offset wells acidized with mechanical
techniques in the same reservoir and at the same level.

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 SPE 174790

Insights of Wormhole Propagation During Carbonate Acidizing: Constant Pressure vs.

Constant Rate
Acidizing of carbonate reservoirs is a common technique used to restore and enhance production
by dissolving a small fraction of the rock to create highly conductive channels. Literature review
reveals that most acidizing studies are focused on acid injection at a constant volumetric rate
(CVR) instead of at a constant injection pressure (CIP). Therefore, the primary objective of the
present work is to investigate the benefits and recommended applications of each technique. The
study analyzes dissolution patterns, and wormhole propagation rate.
A coreflood study was conducted using different Indiana limestone cores to assess both
techniques. Additionally, a 2-D wormhole model was used to mathematically describe the
acidizing phenomena. This model describes the reactive transport of acid as a coupling between
Darcy scale flows. The algorithm captures the essential physics and chemistry of the acid reaction
in a carbonate porous medium.

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