Evaluation of intelligent dual-lateral well in multi-layered reservoirs

Abstract

Multilateral well has been widely introduced in petroleum industry in the past few decades. With its main benefit of cost saving yet able to let the production field obtaining reserve underneath as much as or even more than drilling multiple conventional vertical or horizontal wells. Integrating this drilling method with one of the newest completion technologies, intelligent completion, is expected to solve or improve water coning problem. The objective of this study is to identify intelligent well configuration when combining with dual-opposed multilateral well that could yield benefit on improving oil recovery factor as well as reducing water production. Further study is also performed on sensitivity analysis of selected reservoir parameters. Results show that not every each water cut ratio of production scenarios or at every depth of the dual-lateral well should be designed for intelligent completion. The intelligent completion equipping criteria depends mainly on preset water cut ratio as well as location of one varied branch of dual opposed well. In this study, intelligent completion equipped at varied lateral located at 25th and 15th vertical grid block show benefit of oil recovery compared to the openhole cases. In terms of sensitivity analysis, aquifer strength of 100PV is proven to be a good reservoir property for installing intelligent completion. Ratio of vertical to horizontal permeability more than 0.1 shows ineffectiveness of intelligent completion installation.