An Approach Towell Placement and Productionin a Green Field – A Case Study

Abstract

Reservoir development planning and well placement significantly affect hydrocarbon recovery. Therefore, strategic well placement and development techniques are essential to minimize the risk of unproductive drilling and also to maximize production within the reservoir. This study presents an approach to well placement and production in a green field. A 3D static model of the green field was built using geostatistical techniques to distribute the various model petrophysical properties such as porosity, thickness, and permeability in order to provide reliable reservoir description for dynamic modeling. A dynamic model was constructed to evaluate various reservoir development problems, including well placement, number and types of wells to be drilled in the green field. The drilling of both vertical and horizontal wells was considered in the analysis. Finding the optimal length of the horizontal well to be drilled in order to maximize oil recovery and to properly develop the reservoir was considered a significant problem to address. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the impact of horizontal well length on oil recovery. The vertical to horizontal permeability anisotropy (kvkh) was also studied in this work. The results of the analysis indicate that horizontal well length influences cumulative oil production. Drilling a 3000ft. long horizontal well was found to produce a higher cumulative volume of oil than the oil recovery obtained from similarly placed horizontal wells but with shorter lengths of 2000 ft. and 1500 ft. It is concluded that the methodology proposed in this study will find application in the development of a green field.