Evaluation and optimization of multilateral well combined with intelligent completion technology

Abstract

Horizontal and multilateral wells have gained a lot of attention since it can improve well productivity comparing with conventional well. The major benefits are to save cost by decreasing a total number of wells and increase the area of exposure or access particular area in a complex reservoir. Recently, new application for multilateral wells called intelligent completion is available. This new technology allows us to monitor and control the production and hydrocarbon from a remote location in real time. Three well geometries: horizontal, bilateral, and fishbone wells drilled in a fluvial reservoir which contains oil channel stripes and water aquifer were studied. The comparison between openhole and intelligent completion was performed. The results show that the fishbone geometry which has the longest effective length yields the highest oil production. Moreover, the fishbone well has the ability to retard water cresting phenomenon which causes high water production. The advantages of intelligent completion become more significant when the water production is limited in both completions. The effect of vertical permeability was investigated in the last part of this study. The fishbone well with intelligent completion yields more oil production with lower vertical permeability. Nevertheless, the intelligent elements do not give any advantage if the vertical permeability is extremely small because openhole well sufficiently produces oil without the disturbance from water aquifer located underneath the reservoir.