Abstract
Inflow Control Devices (ICDs) have been widely used in horizontal wells for conventional oil and gas production to prevent early water breakthrough or gas coning. In thermal operations, ICDs are often installed after steam breakthrough to manage steam coning and mitigate hot spots as part of retrofit strategies. However, there remains a limited understanding of how ICDs behave under steam flashing conditions, and appropriate modeling approaches for these scenarios are still lacking.
The primary objective of this presentation is to highlight the key challenges that must be addressed in the design and optimization of ICDs for thermal applications.
ICD implementation in thermal recovery projects—such as Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), and steam flooding—has generally been positive. Many producers have seen improved performance with ICDs. While some operators have reported excellent results, others have experienced mixed or even negative outcomes.
One contributing factor is that early ICD designs were not specifically engineered for SAGD or similar thermal processes, making them poorly suited in some applications. Moreover, the modeling tools currently used for ICD design have significant limitations. Although they can be calibrated through history matching, these models often fail to accurately represent the pressure drops across the devices or provide meaningful insights into device performance and selection.
As the industry gains experience in modeling the behavior of ICDs in thermal environments and develops fit-for-purpose tools, it is expected that both ICD design and field performance will continue to improve.
At the end of this presentation audience will have better understanding maybe not a full solution for the following questions such as:
• How do ICDs help improve producer performance?
• Is steam flashing important to be considered in our ICD design?
• How ICD interact with the reservoir?
• For thermal applications, which one works better: less or more aggressive ICD design?
Bio
Dr. Mazda Irani is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ashaw Energy and currently serves as a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Engineer at Tetra Tech. He brings over 17 years of experience in a broad range of thermal and conventional oil and gas operations.
Dr. Irani is actively involved in the design and optimization of CO₂ injection systems and geothermal operations. One of his key roles includes leading the development of a software platform that assists operators in managing both conventional and SAGD (Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage) wells—optimizing subcool, identifying and mitigating hot spots, and refining Inflow control device (ICD) designs for heterogeneous reservoirs.
Dr. Irani has held technical and leadership positions with organizations including Sproule, E2E Energy, Variperm, Cenovus Energy, Suncor Energy, RPS Energy, and C-FER Technologies. He has authored and presented over 100 technical papers covering various aspects of oil and gas operations.