Sarfare, Manoj Dnyandeo (2005-05). Reservoir studies of new multilateral well architecture. Master's Thesis. Thesis uri icon

abstract

  • Hydrocarbon 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.

publication date

  • May 2005