Recently, a new fiber-laden, self-diverting, and viscoelastic acid has been successfully used for matrix acidizing of highly heterogeneous carbonate formations. The fibers have been designed to be inert under surface and pumping conditions, and their geometry allows them to form strong and stable fiber networks that can effectively bridge across natural fractures, wormholes, and perforation tunnels. Eventually, the fibers degrade into a water-soluble organic liquid that is produced back to the surface during flowback.

In the case of perforated wells, experiments suggest that diversion with fibers operates in three phases. First, as the early volumes of fiber-laden acid reach the perforations, the acid penetrates the reservoir as if no fibers were present. Second, as the fibers bridge, they accumulate inside the perforations and form a fiber cake. Third, the fibers plug the perforation, and the injectivity decreases locally, promoting diversion into other perforations. The pressure drop through a plugged perforation was analyzed by performing 340 separate fine-scale 3D simulations. The original work was based on theoretical and laboratory-based experiments, considering typical perforation schemes and for various permeability ratios between the generated fiber cake and the formation’s original permeability. The results were compiled, and a correlation was made to model the resulting skin. The model was implemented into an acid placement simulator and was extensively tested and validated in the field.

In this paper, we present the model that describes the effect of fiber accumulation within perforations and explain how some of the model parameters such as formation-permeability contrast, fiber-cake permeability, and total permeability thickness (kh) may affect diversion efficiency. Case studies from field testing of the model illustrate methods of pressure history matching, job design, and treatment history evaluation.