This paper describes an extended-well-test campaign using intelligent completions in a presalt reservoir. To understand reservoir behavior during production better, several options were analyzed for the first extended well test. Drilling wells provides valuable rock and formation knowledge; however, this information is not sufficient to simulate formation-flow behavior during the field life cycle and reduce production uncertainties. A triple-zone intelligent completion was envisioned as the optimal solution to understand how each interval would behave under production or injection.

Introduction

Presalt represents an important driver of the oil industry in Brazil because it is responsible for a large percentage of the total oil being produced in the country. In 2010, the discovery of a new and gigantic field (estimated at 8 billion bbl) increased the importance of the presalt polygon for the region, and it was considered a watershed in terms of the country’s economy, intensifying oil-industry activities at the time. The field, in the Santos Basin, is approximately 140 miles offshore Rio de Janeiro (Fig. 1 above).

According to Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, available field resources can vary from 8 billion to 12 billion bbl, while the production per day can reach up to 1.4 million bbl. With these significant numbers, field exploration and production became the focus of a main operator in Brazil.