Dual Independent Oval Pads (DIOP) Platform for Testing Wide Range of Complex Reservoirs

Wireline testing technology has developed over many years and continues to evolve as applications extend to more complex reservoirs. The utilization of traditional wireline tools for reservoir pressure and sampling faces significant challenges to capture high quality samples in the presence of complex fluid dynamics in low permeability to tight reservoirs. These challenging reservoirs, often characterized by suboptimal reservoir quality, pose difficulties for evaluation, leading to the inadvertent neglect of substantial hydrocarbon reserves. Testing has often been limited by either the surface area coverage between probes and formation requiring significant movement to land good quality spots or the high differential pressure that results due to increasing flow rates with smaller probes. This study aims to address these challenges by introducing a new probe to the field of formation testing. The dual independently- deployed oval pads have a flow area from 30 to 54 squared inches and can operate with up to 8000 psi differential pressure. This probe enables testing of low to moderate mobility reservoirs and extends capabilities to testing depleted formations under high differential pressure conditions. Furthermore, it can greatly increase chances of success for evaluating heavy oil and unconventional reservoirs by significantly minimizing drawdown pressure compared to conventional formation testers. The emergence of Dual Independent Oval Pads (DIOP) allows reservoir engineers to get desired dynamic information over a broader range of challenging reservoirs in less time. Tool flexibility in drawdown rate and volume coupled with DIOP results in a higher rate of success over ranges of permeability, fluid viscosity, and reservoir laminations. Furthermore, DIOP is designed with independent deployment of the dual pads minimizing the possibility of not sealing across rugose boreholes. This work presents some field examples of testing and sampling using Dual Independent Oval Pads to pump out across different ranges of reservoir mobilities. An increase in pumping rate with significant reduction in drawdown pressure was observed compared to performance with the conventional dual probe configuration in similar reservoir environments.