CFD Simulation of a Production Well in the North Sea

Detailed information of the near-well fluid flow is important for optimizing the production of hydrocarbons. In standard large-scale reservoir simulators the near-well physics are not captured, where the wells are usually represented by sink or source terms. The interaction between grid block pressure and well pressure is obtained with analytical solutions, which are tuned to match production history through a skin factor. Furthermore, in some commercial simulators the pressure loss in long horizontal wells are based on roughness calculations for flow in non-perforated pipes.

We demonstrate that by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) it is possible to obtain a detailed modeling of the near-well flow. The detailed simulations include the 3D trajectory of the well, completions, detailed reservoir information, etc… A simple benchmark case is shown to validate the CFD method against an analytical solution. The well SCA-11A in the Danish Siri Field is then modeled using CFD. Measured pressures are used as boundary conditions for the simulation, and the single phase fluid is represented using the reservoir fluid properties.