Flow Profiling
Silixa’s ArrayProfile™ services offer a means to efficiently gather production or injection profiles along the entire wellbore with minimal or no intervention. Using permanently installed fibre optic cables, our real-time and near-real-time answers increase recovery by enabling faster and more confident decision making.
High resolution distributed acoustic and temperature data can be acquired equally well on both singlemode and multimode fibres, enabling the use of legacy fibres.
Distributed sensing utilises optical fibres within a steel walled cable which can be placed permanently in the well as part of a completion.
The optical fibre behaves as a sensor array making it possible to log the entire well path continuously without the need to move the cable and so providing information about dynamic flowing conditions in a way in which conventional sensors cannot.
Temperature data has been used in the evaluation of producing wells for many years and is still a core measurement for the production engineer however complimenting temperature information with the unique attributes of true acoustic data gives the user a much more powerful decision support tool.
Silixa leads the way in its unique combined approach that employs both temperature and acoustic data in production profiling.
Our proprietary computational models are able to differentiate between phases and quantify flow using acoustic and thermal properties of the produced fluids taking the multiphase fluid dynamics into account.
Temperature of the flowing fluid in the well is a function of a number of parameters such as the intrinsic thermal properties of the fluids, well components, the geothermal temperature, dimensions of the wellbore, the rate at which the fluid are produced and the duration since the start of production. Our DTS modelling capabilities allow us to accurately model the thermodynamic processes and predict flow rates of each phase produced.
The intelligent Distributed Acoustic Sensor (iDAS) captures the true acoustic field (amplitude, frequency, and phase) at all points along the well.
Advanced acoustic processing, unique to Silixa, can be used to determine the speed of sound in the production fluid at different depths; this information indicates in-situ fluid type and can be used to resolve hold-up in two-phase flow. Additionally, the Doppler shift between the speed of sound modes travelling up and down in the well make it possible to measure the fluid flow velocity and hence flow rates for a given tubing size.
Utilising legacy fibres delivers cost savings
Accurate flow profiling answers can be delivered without intervention to operations. Distributed acoustic and temperature data can be acquired on both singlemode and multimode fibre, enabling us to utilise pre-existing fibres. This delivers obvious cost-savings.
Full wellbore coverage, more data in less time for accurate decision making
Distributed acoustic and temperature data is acquired simultaneously along the entire length of the fibre optic cable.
Unlike point sensors, distributed sensing can quickly identify complex and dynamic downhole issues offering actionable information in considerably less time. This enables timely decisions on remediation.
Delivering actionable information in real-time and near real-time
The ArrayProfile Software allows for real-time integrated visualisation of temperature and spectral acoustic data for quality control and initial evaluation while a post processing platform facilitates advanced data processing and versatile plotting options so that corroborating answers from independent measurements, iDAS™ and ULTIMA™ DTS, can be presented as actionable information to the user.
- Identify active vs. inactive production zones
- Zonal production allocation
- Cross-flow identification
- Water or Gas entry detection
- Injection profiling
- Flow régime identification
- Production diagnostics
Carina® 100xLog, the intervention-based fibre optic well logging service, can deliver well flow profiling answers on wireline, slickline or coiled tubing in real time, at the wellsite. Read more about the service here.
