If the increasing water cut means that the well is dying, then you can do stuff like playing with artificial lift parameters (or putting the well on artificial lift), changing the tubing size, reducing back pressure on the well (ie open the choke) to increase the overall production.
If the problem is simply the increase in water then you'll have to shut off the water production in some way: pump a chemical shutoff (there are various chemicals of varying effectivness that are supposed to shut off water zones), bridge plugs, cement that sort of thing.
If you are very lucky, you may find the water production is due to coning, and if you are even luckier, that the cone is an unstable cone, and that throttleing the well back will cause the water cone to collapse and you go back to dry oil. But real life is very rarely like that!!
Hi DrillerNic
Thanks for your response, it really clarify me a few stuffs that I was not totally sure about it. The problem really is the high water cut, so I think my best approach would be have a carefully look at the logs, and production test, to see if I can determine which is the zone producing the water and try to correct that or re-complete the well in other prospective zone.
Thanks
And by for now
I am interested in this question. The field and well you are talking about:
- What is the reservoir drive mechanism?
- Production via artificial lift?
These two questions are important as each will impact the solution you propose for water shut-off. A field i work with in Australia is a waterdrive where we have a water-cut of around 97%. Our watershutoff techniques are quite different to say if the reservoir was aquifer driven and conning was the cause of watercut.
