WO2024138028A1

WO2024138028A1 - Controlled flowback for stress testing using a bottle with glide sampling

Info

Publication number: WO2024138028A1
Application number: PCT/US2023/085501
Authority: WO
Inventors: Chen Tao; Ashers Partouche; Francois Xavier Dubost; Keith R. Nelson; Yan Fiona LI
Original assignee: Schlumberger Technology Corporation; Schlumberger Canada Limited; Services Petroliers Schlumberger; Schlumberger Technology B.V.
Priority date: 2022-12-22
Filing date: 2023-12-21
Publication date: 2024-06-27

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present disclosure provide controlled flowback of sample fluids for stress testing in wireline toolstrings, for example, using a bottle with glide sampling. For example, a downhole toolstring may include a flow control device configured to receive a sample fluid from a subterranean formation. The flow control device includes a pump system configured to control flow of the sample fluid into the downhole toolstring from the subterranean formation, and a formation fluid container comprising one or more relief valves and one or more formation fluid bottles configured to store the sample fluid. The flow control device also includes a control system configured to control flowback of the sample fluid.

Description

CONTROLLED FLOWBACK FOR STRESS TESTING USING A BOTTLE WITH GLIDE SAMPLING

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] The present application is an International Application that claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/476,670 that was filed on December 22, 2022, which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0002] The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for providing controlled flowback of sample fluids for stress testing in wireline toolstrings, for example, using a bottle with glide sampling.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

[0003] This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.

[0004] Downhole toolstrings, such as wireline toolstrings, are configured to perform various downhole operations including, but not limited to, deep transient testing, fluid sampling, fluid analysis, and so forth. Conventional flow management control schemes of downhole toolstrings are generally not configured to allow pumping of sample fluids from high pressure to low pressure due to the fact that mud check valves (MCVs) of the downhole toolstring generally allow flow from high pressure to low pressure without much resistance. SUMMARY

[0005] A summary of certain embodiments disclosed herein is set forth below. It should be understood that these aspects are presented merely to provide the reader with a brief summary of these certain embodiments and that these aspects are not intended to limit the scope of this disclosure. Indeed, this disclosure may encompass a variety of aspects that may not be set forth below.

[0006] Certain embodiments of the present disclosure include a method for controlling flowback of a sample fluid in a downhole toolstring. The method includes inflating one or more packers to isolate an interval of a formation in fluid communication with the downhole toolstring. The method also includes using a pump system of the downhole toolstring to inject the sample fluid into the formation communication isolation interval. The method further includes closing a plurality of valves of the downhole toolstring while holding pressure behind one or more formation fluid bottles of a formation fluid container of the downhole toolstring using one or more relief valves of the formation fluid container. In addition, the method includes using the pump system to induce flow from the isolated interval of the formation into the one or more formation fluid bottles of the formation fluid container by reducing pressure in front of the one or more relief valves.

[0007] In addition, certain embodiments of the present disclosure include a downhole toolstring that includes a flow control device configured to receive a fluid from a subterranean formation or wellbore. The flow control device includes a pump system configured to control flow of the fluid into the downhole toolstring from the subterranean formation, and a formation fluid container comprising one or more relief valves and one or more formation fluid bottles configured to store the fluid. The flow control device also includes a control system configured to control flowback of the fluid.

[0008] Various refinements of the features noted above may exist in relation to various aspects of the present disclosure. Further features may also be incorporated in these various aspects as well. These refinements and additional features may exist individually or in any combination. For instance, various features discussed below in relation to one or more of the illustrated embodiments may be incorporated into any of the abovedescribed aspects of the present disclosure alone or in any combination. The brief summary presented above is intended only to familiarize the reader with certain aspects and contexts of embodiments of the present disclosure without limitation to the claimed subject matter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0009] Various aspects of this disclosure may be better understood upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings, in which:

[0010] FIG. 1 illustrates a system configured to perform a downhole oil and gas operation, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

[0011] FIG. 2 illustrates certain flow control devices of a wireline toolstring of the system of FIG. 1 , in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure;

[0012] FIGS. 3 through 6 illustrate a series of steps of a method to perform controlled flowback of a sample fluid into the wireline toolstring of FIG. 1 , in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; and

[0013] FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of various components of a control system of the wireline toolstring of FIG. 1 .

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0014] In the following, reference is made to embodiments of the disclosure. It should be understood, however, that the disclosure is not limited to specific described embodiments. Instead, any combination of the following features and elements, whether related to different embodiments or not, is contemplated to implement and practice the disclosure. Furthermore, although embodiments of the disclosure may achieve advantages over other possible solutions and/or over the prior art, whether or not a particular advantage is achieved by a given embodiment is not limiting of the disclosure. Thus, the following aspects, features, embodiments and advantages are merely illustrative and are not considered elements or limitations of the claims except where explicitly recited in a claim. Likewise, reference to “the disclosure” shall not be construed as a generalization of inventive subject matter disclosed herein and should not be considered to be an element or limitation of the claims except where explicitly recited in a claim.

[0015] Although the terms first, second, third, etc., may be used herein to describe various elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections, these elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections should not be limited by these terms. These terms may be only used to distinguish one element, component, region, layer or section from another region, layer or section. Terms such as “first”, “second” and other numerical terms, when used herein, do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context. Thus, a first element, component, region, layer or section discussed herein could be termed a second element, component, region, layer or section without departing from the teachings of the example embodiments.

[0016] When introducing elements of various embodiments of the present disclosure, the articles "a," "an," and "the" are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms "comprising," "including," and "having" are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements. Additionally, it should be understood that references to "one embodiment" or "an embodiment" of the present disclosure are not intended to be interpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments that also incorporate the recited features.

[0017] When an element or layer is referred to as being “on,” “engaged to,” “connected to,” or “coupled to” another element or layer, it may be directly on, engaged, connected, coupled to the other element or layer, or interleaving elements or layers may be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being “directly on,” “directly engaged to,” “directly connected to,” or “directly coupled to” another element or layer, there may be no interleaving elements or layers present. Other words used to describe the relationship between elements should be interpreted in a like fashion. As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed terms.

[0018] Some embodiments will now be described with reference to the figures. Like elements in the various figures will be referenced with like numbers for consistency. In the following description, numerous details are set forth to provide an understanding of various embodiments and/or features. It will be understood, however, by those skilled in the art, that some embodiments may be practiced without many of these details, and that numerous variations or modifications from the described embodiments are possible. As used herein, the terms “above” and “below”, “up” and “down”, “upper” and “lower”, “upwardly” and “downwardly”, and other like terms indicating relative positions above or below a given point are used in this description to more clearly describe certain embodiments.

[0019] In addition, as used herein, the terms "real time", "real-time", or "substantially real time" may be used interchangeably and are intended to describe operations (e.g., computing operations) that are performed without any human-perceivable interruption between operations. For example, as used herein, data relating to the systems described herein may be collected, transmitted, and/or used in control computations in "substantially real time" such that data readings, data transfers, and/or data processing steps occur once every second, once every 0.1 second, once every 0.01 second, or even more frequent, during operations of the systems (e.g., while the systems are operating). In addition, as used herein, the terms "continuous", "continuously", or "continually" are intended to describe operations that are performed without any significant interruption. For example, as used herein, control commands may be transmitted to certain equipment every five minutes, every minute, every 30 seconds, every 15 seconds, every 10 seconds, every 5 seconds, or even more often, such that operating parameters of the equipment may be adjusted without any significant interruption to the closed-loop control of the equipment. In addition, as used herein, the terms "automatic", "automated", "autonomous", and so forth, are intended to describe operations that are performed are caused to be performed, for example, by a computing system (i.e., solely by the computing system, without human intervention). Indeed, it will be appreciated that the control system described herein may be configured to perform any and all of the control functions described herein automatically.

[0020] In addition, as used herein, the term “substantially similar” may be used to describe values that are different by only a relatively small degree relative to each other. For example, two values that are substantially similar may be values that are within 10% of each other, within 5% of each other, within 3% of each other, within 2% of each other, within 1 % of each other, or even within a smaller threshold range, such as within 0.5% of each other or within 0.1 % of each other.

[0021] Similarly, as used herein, the term “substantially parallel” may be used to define downhole tools, formation layers, and so forth, that have longitudinal axes that are parallel with each other, only deviating from true parallel by a few degrees of each other. For example, a downhole tool that is substantially parallel with a formation layer may be a downhole tool that traverses the formation layer parallel to a boundary of the formation layer, only deviating from true parallel relative to the boundary of the formation layer by less than 5 degrees, less than 3 degrees, less than 2 degrees, less than 1 degree, or even less.

[0022] The embodiments described herein include systems and methods for providing controlled flowback of sample fluids for stress testing in wireline toolstrings, for example, using a bottle with glide sampling. FIG. 1 illustrates a system 100 configured to perform a downhole oil and gas operation. As illustrated, in certain embodiments, a wireline toolstring 102 may be disposed in a wellbore 104. The wireline toolstring 102 may include a plurality of wireline tools. For example, in certain embodiments, the wireline toolstring 102 may be configured to perform deep transient testing, fluid sampling, fluid analysis, and so forth. In certain embodiments, the wireline toolstring 102 may include digital hardware with cloud-native collaborative software that enables the wireline toolstring 102 to perform such analysis and enable enhanced control of the downhole operations in substantially real time.

[0023] As illustrated, in certain embodiments, the wireline toolstring 102 may include one or more packers 106, and the wireline toolstring 102 may be positioned in the wellbore 104 such that one or more packers 106 are adjacent zones of interest 108, such as perforated zones, as illustrated, or open hole zones, fractured zones, or similar zones of a subterranean formation 110 through which the wellbore 104 extends. In certain embodiments, once the zone of interest 108 is perforated, the wireline toolstring 102 may be conveyed into the wellbore 104 using any suitable means of conveyance including wireline, drill pipes, and so forth. The wireline toolstring 102 may then be lowered to a desired location where the one or more packers 106 are located adjacent the end of the zone of interest 108. The one or more packers 106 may then be set, thereby isolating the zone of interest 108 via the one or more packers 106.

[0024] The wireline toolstring 102 may be used to perform wireline operations. The wireline operations can include sampling, downhole fluid analysis, transient testing, and so forth. For example, during sampling, pump modules that are part of the wireline toolstring 102 may be operated to draw fluid into a fluid analyzer of the wireline toolstring 102 from the subterranean formation 110. After completion of the wireline operation, the one or more packers 106 may be deflated and the wireline toolstring 102 may be brought back to surface.

[0025] As such, the wireline toolstring 102 may include various flow control devices configured to control the flow of sample fluids into and through the wireline toolstring 102 to enable the wireline tools of the wireline toolstring 102 to perform deep transient testing, fluid sampling, fluid analysis, and so forth, as described in greater detail herein. Conventional flow management control schemes of downhole toolstrings are generally not configured to allow pumping of sample fluids from high pressure to low pressure due to the fact that the mud check valves (MCVs) 112 of the wireline toolstring 102 generally allow flow from high pressure to low pressure without much resistance. The embodiments described herein introduce various systems and methods to overcome these deficiencies of the conventional flow management control schemes of downhole toolstrings.

[0026] As discussed above, conventional flow management control schemes of downhole toolstrings generally only enable pumping of fluids in a controlled manner by a reciprocating pump 114 of the wireline toolstring 102 from low pressure to high pressure, as illustrated in FIG. 2. When high pressure and low pressure are switched as illustrated in FIG. 2, the high pressure will go from MCV3 to MCV1 or MCV4 to MCV2 freely without going through the reciprocating pump 114.

[0027] Certain embodiments described herein introduce systems and methods to allow flowback in a controlled manner from high pressure to low pressure by operating the wireline toolstring 102 in a glide sampling configuration with a high-pressure relief valve, as described in greater detail herein in FIGS. 3 through 6, which illustrate a series of operational steps to perform the controlled feedback after injection of the sample fluid to interval. As illustrated in FIG. 3, in certain embodiments, the wireline toolstring 102 may include a single pump system 116 and glide sample up. In particular, the pump system 116 includes the MCVs 112 and the reciprocating pump 114, which enable the flow of sample fluids into the wireline toolstring 102 from the subterranean formation 110 as well as the flow of fracturing fluids and other fluids into the subterranean formation 110 from the wireline toolstring 102.

[0028] In addition, in certain embodiments, one or more high pressure relief valves 118 (e.g., 2,900 pounds per square inch (psi) relief vales, in certain embodiments) may be disposed on the backside of formation fluid bottles 120 in a formation fluid container 122 of the wireline toolstring 102. Furthermore, as also illustrated in FIG. 3, in certain embodiments, each of the relief valves 118 may be coupled in parallel with associated control valves 124. In general, the process of controlling flowback of sample fluids begins with the packers 106 of a formation communication isolation interval 126 of the wireline toolstring 102 being inflated. [0029] Then, as illustrated in FIG. 4, in certain embodiments, the pump system 116 may be placed in a PumpDown mode, where fluid is injected to interval, as illustrated by arrow 128. Then, as illustrated in FIG. 5, in certain embodiments, one or more guard valves 130 and a comingle valve 132 of the formation communication isolation interval 126 and upper and lower seal valves 134, 136 of the formation fluid container 122 may be closed to place the pump system 116 in a PurnpUp mode. In this mode, pressure is held by the relief valves 118 of the formation fluid container 122 behind the formation fluid bottles 120 of the formation fluid container 122. In this mode, flowline 127 in the formation communication isolation interval 126, as well as the flowlines 123 in the formation fluid container 122 and a first flowline 138, are at interval pressure. In contrast, all of the lines in the pump system 116 and a second flowline 140 are at hydrostatic pressure. Then, as illustrated in FIG. 6, in certain embodiments, a chamber valve of an unfiled formation fluid bottle 120 may be opened, but flow of the sample fluid may not occur since the relief valves 118 are holding the pressure. At this point, the pump system 116 may be used to move the sample fluid up in the first flowline 138, as illustrated by arrow 142, which will reduce pressure in front of the relief valves 118. When a pressure differential is higher than a cracking pressure of the relief valves 118, interval fluid may enter the formation fluid bottle 120, as illustrated by arrow 144, and the interval pressure may decrease. At this point, flowback may be controlled at a desired flow rate.

[0030] In certain embodiments, the direct application of the wireline toolstring 102 described herein may include stress testing. After injection to a dual packer interval, relatively high pressure in the interval may be bleed off during flowback. With controlled flowback, formation pressure response may be monitored to analyze various formation properties.

[0031] In addition to the various flow control devices described herein, the wireline toolstring 102 includes a control system 146 configured to control the functionality of the wireline toolstring 102 including, but not limited to, controlling the operating states of the various flow control devices described herein, as well as controlling the various wireline operations performed by the wireline toolstring 102. FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of various components of the control system 146 of the wireline toolstring 102. As illustrated in FIG. 7, in certain embodiments, the control system 146 may include one or more processor(s) 148, memory media 150, storage media 152, and communication circuitry 154. In certain embodiments, the control system 146 may send control signals to, among other things, the flow control devices of the wireline toolstring 102 to control flowback of sample fluids flowing through the wireline toolstring 102, as described in greater detail herein. In particular, the processor(s) 148, using instructions stored in the memory media 150 and/or storage media 152, may determine when and how to control operational parameters of the wireline toolstring 102, as described in greater detail herein. As such, the memory media 150 and/or the storage media 152 of the control system 146 may be any suitable article of manufacture that can store the instructions. The memory media 150 and/or the storage media 152 may be read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), flash memory, an optical storage medium, or a hard disk drive, to name a few examples. The communication circuitry 154 may be any suitable circuitry configured to enable communication with external systems including, but not limited to, a surface control system, cloud storage, and so forth.

[0032] While embodiments have been described herein, those skilled in the art, having benefit of this disclosure, will appreciate that other embodiments are envisioned that do not depart from the inventive scope. Accordingly, the scope of the present claims or any subsequent claims shall not be unduly limited by the description of the embodiments described herein.

[0033] The techniques presented and claimed herein are referenced and applied to material objects and concrete examples of a practical nature that demonstrably improve the present technical field and, as such, are not abstract, intangible or purely theoretical. Further, if any claims appended to the end of this specification contain one or more elements designated as “means for [perform]ing [a function]...” or “step for [performing [a function]...”, it is intended that such elements are to be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). However, for any claims containing elements designated in any other manner, it is intended that such elements are not to be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f).

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS:

1 . A method for controlling flowback of a sample fluid in a downhole toolstring, the method comprising: inflating one or more packers to isolate an interval of a formation in fluid communication with the downhole toolstring; using a pump system of the downhole toolstring to inject the sample fluid into the formation communication isolation interval; closing a plurality of valves of the downhole toolstring while holding pressure behind one or more formation fluid bottles of a formation fluid container of the downhole toolstring using one or more relief valves of the formation fluid container; and using the pump system to induce flow from the isolated interval of the formation into the one or more formation fluid bottles of the formation fluid container by reducing pressure in front of the one or more relief valves.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein each relief valve of the one or more relief valves is coupled in parallel with an associated control valve to facilitate further control of the flowback of the sample fluid.

3. The method of claim 1 , comprising using a control system to control the flow of the sample fluid into the one or more formation fluid bottles of the formation fluid container to a desired flow rate.

4. A downhole toolstring, comprising: a flow control device configured to receive a fluid from a subterranean formation or wellbore, wherein the flow control device comprises: a pump system configured to control flow of the fluid into the downhole toolstring from the subterranean formation; and a formation fluid container comprising one or more relief valves and one or more formation fluid bottles configured to store the fluid; and a control system configured to control flowback of the fluid.

5. The downhole toolstring of claim 4, wherein the control system is configured to control the flowback of the fluid by: inflating one or more packers to isolate an interval with of the formation in fluid communication with the downhole toolstring; closing a plurality of valves of the downhole toolstring while holding pressure behind the one or more formation fluid bottles using the one or more relief valves; and using the pump system to induce flow of the fluid in the formation communication isolation interval into the one or more formation fluid bottles by reducing pressure in front of the one or more relief valves.

6. The downhole toolstring of claim 4, wherein each relief valve of the one or more relief valves is coupled in parallel with an associated control valve to facilitate further control of the flowback of the fluid.

7. The downhole toolstring of claim 4, wherein the control system is configured to control the flow of the fluid into the one or more formation fluid bottles to a desired flow rate.