You are on page 1of 17

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.

1. Conning Vertical Well:


A. Critical Rate Correlations
B. Breakthrough Time
C. Breakthrough Performance

1. Coning In Horizontal Wells


2. Horizontal Well Breakthrough Time

horizontal well technology


The applications of horizontal well technology in
developing hydrocarbon reservoirs have been
widely used in recent years.
One of the main objectives of using this technology is to
improve hydrocarbon recovery from water and/or gascap drive reservoirs.
The advantages of using a horizontal well over a
conventional vertical well are their larger capacity to
produce oil at the same drawdown and a longer
breakthrough time at a given production rate.

Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

Coning problem calculations in


horizontal wells
Many correlations to predict coning behavior in
horizontal wells are available in the literature.
Joshi (1991) provides a detailed treatment of the coning
problem in horizontal wells.

As in vertical wells, the coning problem in


horizontal wells involves the following calculations:
Determination of the critical flow rate
Breakthrough time predictions
Well performance calculations after breakthrough

Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

Horizontal Well Critical Rate


Correlations: Chapersons Method
Chaperson (1986) provides a simple and practical
estimate or the critical rate under steady-state or
pseudosteady-state flowing conditions for an
isotropic formation.
Water coning
Gas Coning

The above two equations are applicable under the


following constraint:
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

Horizontal Well Critical Rate:


Chapersons Method (Cont.)
Where

Db = distance between the WOC and the horizontal well


Dt = distance between the GOC and the horizontal well
Qoc = critical oil rate, STB/day
= density, lb/ft3
kh = horizontal permeability, md
h = oil column thickness, ft
ye = half distance between two lines of horizontal wells
(half drainage length perpendicular to the horizontal well)
L = length of the horizontal well
q*c = dimensionless function

Joshi (1991) correlated the dimensionless function F


with the parameter :
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

Horizontal Well Critical Rate:


Efros Method
Efros (1963) proposed a critical flow rate
correlation that is based on
the assumption that the critical rate
is nearly independent of drainage radius.
The correlation does not account
for the effect of the vertical permeability.
Water coning
Gas coning
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

Horizontal Well Critical Rate:


Karchers Method
Karcher (1986) proposed a correlation that
produces a critical oil flow rate value similar to that
of Efros equation.
Again, the correlation does not account for the vertical
permeability.

Water coning

Gas coning

Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

10

Horizontal Well Breakthrough Time;


The Ozkan-Raghavan Method
Ozkan and Raghavan (1988) proposed
a theoretical correlation for calculating time
to breakthrough in a bottom-water-drive reservoir.
They introduced
the following dimensionless parameters:

L = well length, ft
Db = distance between WOC and horizontal well
H = formation thickness, ft
kv = vertical permeability, md
kh = horizontal permeability, md
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

12

Horizontal Well Breakthrough Time;


The Ozkan-Raghavan Method (Cont.)
Ozkan and Raghavan expressed the water breakthrough
time by the following equation:
with the parameter fd as defined by:
tBT = time to breakthrough, days
Kv, kh = vertical, horizontal permeability, md
= porosity, fraction
Swc = connate water saturation, fraction
Sor = residual oil saturation, fraction
Qo = oil flow rate, STB/day
Es = sweep efficiency, dimensionless
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

13

Sweep efficiency
for horizontal and vertical wells
Ozkan and
Raghavan
graphically
correlated the
sweep
efficiency with
the
dimensionless
well length LD
and
dimensionless
vertical
distance ZWD
as shown
Spring14 H. AlamiNia

Reservoir Engineering 2 Course (1st Ed.)

14

1. Ahmed, T. (2010). Reservoir engineering


handbook (Gulf Professional Publishing).
Chapter 9

1. Introduction
2. Classification Of Aquifers
3. Recognition Of Natural Water Influx

You might also like