Browsing by Subject "Multilateral"
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Item Modeling performance of horizontal, undulating, and multilateral wells(2009-05-15) Kamkom, RungtipHorizontal, undulating, and multilateral wells are relatively new alternatives in field development because they can increase the productivity per well and reduce the cost of field development. Because the feasibility of these wells may not be valid in some reservoirs, well performance should be verified before making decisions. Undulation is usually associated to horizontal wells with some degrees. Existing inflow performance models do not account for the undulation of the well, which can cause significant error and economic loss. Moreover, some of the inflow models ignore pressure drop along the lateral, which is definitely not true in high production and long lateral wells. The inflow performance models of horizontal, undulating, and multilateral wells are developed in this study. The models can be divided into two main categories: the closed form model and the line source model. The closed form model applies for relatively low vertical permeability formations for the single-phase system and twophase system. The model is flexible and easy to apply with reasonable accuracy. The line source model does not have any restrictions with permeability. The model applies for single-phase system. The model is very accurate and easy to use. Both models can be applied to various well trajectories with realizable accuracy. As a result of this study, the well performance of unconventional well trajectories can be predicted and optimized.Item New multilateral well architecture in heterogeneous reservoirs(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Jia, HongqiaoMultilateral well technology has been widely used in the world oil fields. There still has technical limitation of these kinds of well structure. This thesis presents a new multilateral well architecture which is more flexible and economical. The performance of new multilateral well in heterogeneous reservoirs is studied, and that is compared with vertical well architecture also. In order to study the productivity of new multilateral wells, we use a numerical simulation method to set up heterogeneous reservoir models. The three reservoir models included anisotropic permeability, shale multi-layer, and flow units. Under a pseudo-steady-state, the productivities of horizontal laterals and deviated laterals are calculated and compared. We find that new multilateral well architecture has good performance in heterogeneous reservoir. The heterogeneous properties of reservoirs influence the productivity of horizontal laterals more than deviated laterals. The shale multi-layer and flow units that dominate the fluid flow in reservoirs are important for reservoir characterization.Item Reservoir studies of new multilateral well architecture(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Sarfare, Manoj DnyandeoHydrocarbon recovery from conventional reservoirs is decreasing and the need to produce oil cheaply from mature, marginal and unconventional reservoirs poses a big challenge to the industry today. Multilateral well technology can provide innovative solutions to these problems and prove to be the most likely tool to propel the industry in the next century. In this research we propose a new multilateral well architecture for more efficient and effective field drainage. We study the architecture from a reservoir engineering point of view and analyze the effect of various design parameters such as branch density and penetration extent of laterals on the performance of the proposed architecture for homogeneous reservoirs. We also analyze the performance in case of anisotropic reservoirs. The numerical simulation results show that the multilateral wells usually help improve the overall cumulative production from a reservoir as compared to conventional wells. Also, they provide the added benefit of faster field drainage and present a more attractive return on investment. In this thesis we also present the results for a representative field case analysis. The rapidly changing Solution GOR contributed to making the oil viscous, which reduced the problem to optimize the mother bore location. In addition to these numerical studies we perform analytic studies to develop quick estimates of the theoretical limits of Productivity Index of the proposed architecture. We use known results from the literature to test their validity to estimate the upper and lower bounds on productivity. The results show that current tools to determine the lower limit is insufficient to predict performance.