Multilateral Technology as a Creative Reservoir Development Strategy for New and Mature Fields Alike

Oberkircher, Jim

doi:10.2118/77826-ms

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The herringbone lateral well is an effective production and recovery method, and it is the main development trend of oil and gas reservoir development. − It has been successfully applied in oilfields due to its large oil drainage area, reduction of development costs, and economical and effective development of reservoirs. − Due to the complex structure of herringbone wells, there is mutual interference between wellbores during seepage, resulting in complex seepage problems, and it is difficult to analyze the productivity and evaluate the perforating effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient Productivity Analysis and Completion Parameter Optimization of Perforating Herringbone Wells

et al. 2023

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Herringbone wells are of great significance in tapping the potential of remaining reservoirs, improving recovery efficiency, and reducing development costs and have been widely used in oilfields, especially offshore oilfields. Due to the complex structure of herringbone wells, there is mutual interference between wellbores during seepage, resulting in complex seepage problems, and it is difficult to analyze the productivity and evaluate the perforating effect. In this paper, considering the mutual interference between branches and perforations, a prediction model of transient productivity of perforated herringbone wells was derived based on the theory of transient seepage, and the complex structure with any number of branches, arbitrary configurations, and orientations in three-dimensional space could be considered in this model. The formation pressure in reservoir points at different production times, IPR curves, and the radial inflow of herringbone well were studied by the line-source superposition method, which directly reflected the process of productivity and pressure change, avoiding the one-sidedness caused by using a point source to replace the line source in the stability analysis. Then, through the productivity calculation of different perforation schemes, the influence curves of perforation density, perforation length, perforation phase angle, and perforation radius on unstable productivity were obtained. Orthogonal tests were performed to obtain the degree of impact of each parameter on productivity. Lastly, the selective completion perforation technology was adopted. When the shot density at the end of the wellbore was increased, the productivity of herringbone wells could be improved economically and effectively. According to the above study, a scientific and reasonable construction scheme is recommended for oil well completion construction, which provides a theoretical basis for the improvement and development of perforation completion technology.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient Productivity Analysis and Completion Parameter Optimization of Perforating Herringbone Wells

et al. 2023

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“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] The successes achieved with this well architecture justified extending its use into an oil field in Central Arabia. [1][2][3][4][5][6] The successes achieved with this well architecture justified extending its use into an oil field in Central Arabia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The First Saudi Arabian Trilateral Oil Well in Unconsolidated Sandstone Reservoir

Rabaa

Abduldayem

Al-Ajmi

et al. 2009

Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference &Amp; Exhibition

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Multilateral wells to achieve Maximum Reservoir Contact (MRC) have been widely implemented in a number of new carbonate fields' development in Saudi Arabia, resulting in substantial financial improvement of these assets. The successes achieved with this well architecture justified extending its use into a sandstone oil field that has been characterized with heterogeneous and poorly consolidated sandstone formation. This paper chronicles the multi-disciplinary approach and processes employed to evaluate, plan, and execute the first trilateral well in an unconsolidated heterogeneous sandstone reservoir in Saudi Arabia. The objectives of the ML well are to maximize reservoir contact to enhance sweep efficiency and improve well productivity and to promote the ML application in this complex field to extend field's production plateau. Initial well construction involved side-tracking an idle vertical well that has been shut in due to high WC and low productivity. Prior to drilling the laterals, a deviated pilot hole was drilled across the entire reservoir which helped optimize placement of the laterals. Reentry of an existing well to successfully steer and drill three long horizontal open drain holes into the reservoir imposed several constraints and added to the list of challenges.Incorporating sand control in a multi-lateral environment poses a number of challenges, with complexity driven by the Technology Advancement Multilateral (TAML) level demanded for the junctions between the motherbore and laterals, and by overall well functionality required. Well completion involved installation of an expandable sand screen (ESS) completion in the mainbore and Premium Sand Screens (PSS) completions in the two laterals to facilitate sand-free commingled production from all three laterals. The PSS completions featured a wash-down capability in the high-build angle laterals and also incorporated swell packers positioned just inside the laterals to ensure sand-tight conditions at the TAML Level 3 junctions. Following installation of upper ESP completion, a post-rig extensive clean-up program was conducted to unload all three laterals. The well is currently producing sand-free oil at three times the rate of neighboring single-lateral wells. Following the success and capturing the lesson learned from this trial, another ML well will be drilled in the field.

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Maximizing Oil Recovery in a Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoir using Computational Intelligence Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

et al. 2018

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A major challenge in carbonate reservoirs is the highly-fractured nature of the rock. The flow rate may be high or low depending on the targeted fracture clusters. In addition, it is possible that flow rates vary from one region of the reservoir to another. Smart wells furnished with smart completion strategy presents great prospects to produce such reservoirs intelligently, thereby, helping to deal with heterogeneities rather smartly. It is established that early water break-through occurs when multi-lateral wells are completed with constant choke settings, and therefore one way to mitigate this problem is using smart completions that manage the unexpected production through fractures, thereby increasing ultimate recovery. The early water breakthrough is obvious because if a lateral section intersects a clusters of fracture zone, there is a possibility that these fractures may connect with the water zone that may trigger the breakthrough. This can be managed by preferentially regulating production from manifold laterals. The evident communication among the various laterals of the mother bore raises difficulty in optimizing the production from the variable productivity intervals. In theory, the optimization scheme of smart completion involves different constraints, nevertheless, the settings of the smart inflow control valve (ICV) is the single most important parameter that may prove to be the differentiating factor between a high producing well to a poorly producing one. This study engrosses its effort on the reservoir engineering characteristics of finding the optimum choke setting that would lead to maximum recovery. Computational Intelligence through Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is utilized as the integral algorithm to determine the optimal ICV configuration for a fishbone well in a naturally fractured carbonate reservoir. A commercial black oil simulator was used to determine the objective function; whose role here is to evaluate the fitness of a configuration of the choke; this was carried out under a workflow programmed in the MATLAB programming language that coupled the optimization algorithm with the numerical simulator. A single fishbone well, having 15 laterals was studied in order tot see the effect of the fracture network on the water breakthrough and consequent impact on recovery. Three different scenarios are developed to see the impact of optimization; a base case employing only multilateral well technology without the smart well completion, a smart well completion scheme with no optimization and finally the optimized smart well completion. The results very sequentially clarify the need for not only optimization but also highlights the role of intelligent completions for wells in the reservoir being studied. It is evident that without using smart wells, the water breakthrough is relatively earlier and produces less hydrocarbons, but as the use of smart wells is incorporated, the results start improving and for complete optimization scheme of the ICVs, it is observed that the recovery has increased by almost 80% from 21% to 38%. Moreover, the time to water breakthrough and eventually the cumulative water cut has also been managed quiet significantly.

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Multilateral Technology as a Creative Reservoir Development Strategy for New and Mature Fields Alike

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Transient Productivity Analysis and Completion Parameter Optimization of Perforating Herringbone Wells

Transient Productivity Analysis and Completion Parameter Optimization of Perforating Herringbone Wells

The First Saudi Arabian Trilateral Oil Well in Unconsolidated Sandstone Reservoir

Maximizing Oil Recovery in a Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoir using Computational Intelligence Based on Particle Swarm Optimization

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