Numerical Simulation of Infill Drilling With Horizontal and Vertical Wells: A Case Study of Partial Bottom Water Drive Reservoir
Authors: Coskuner Gokhan , Melon Joseph 
Published: December 2007

The Provost Dina 'X' Pool is a turbidite sand with a pay zone of up to 20 m at a depth of 200 mSS. The field contains approximately 1.2 million m3 of oil and there is a bottom water aquifer with partial pressure support in parts of the field. Most of the vertical wells in the field shut-in due to high water cuts after a relatively short period of production. Therefore, a numerical simulation study of the whole field was undertaken in order to improve recovery by infill drilling as well as by investigating different operating strategies.

This paper describes the integrated team approach taken with input from the geological, production and reservoir engineering specialists to construct a reservoir model. The model has been successfully history matched and used, in turn, for predicting the performance of the field under existing conditions as well as a variety of infill drilling and operating scenarios. Results indicate that significant water coning, which would be observed with new vertical wells in certain areas of the pool, can be reduced through horizontal infill wells.

Despite the potential technical success of horizontal infill wells, they were not economically feasible in this particular reservoir and vertical infill wells were the preferred choice. It is shown that a combination of carefully planned vertical infill wells and a pressure maintenance program is able to boost the ultimate recovery by 34% while keeping the development costs to a minimum. Results of various operating strategies are presented and the optimum field development scenario implemented in the field is outlined. The initial actual reservoir behaviour is discussed in the light of the results from the simulation study.

Introduction

The Provost Dina 'X' pool was discovered in 1988 at an initial pressure of 6450 kPa. The reservoir is located in east central Alberta, south of the town of Consort. The formation is a turbidite sand with a limited bottom water aquifer support. The production from the pool began with the discovery well 05-15-35-06 W4M and, to date, a total of 11 wells have delineated a reservoir area of slightly more than 32 ha. (see Figure 1).

Historically, most of the vertical wells in the field experience high water cuts after a relatively short period of production. Thus, a significant portion of the reserves cannot be produced because of water coning. Infill drilling can compete favourably with BOR processes for the recovery of the bypassed oil for much less investment and operating cost. As the existing vertical wells have to be operated above the critical water coning rates to be economic, horizontal wells become another option for infill drilling. The field experience indicates that horizontal wells can reduce the water coning tendency while increasing the oil production. However, further improvement to oil production rate of horizontal wells is still limited by the encroachment of the water cone when the bottom water exists. Therefore a simulation study was undertaken to investigate the feasibility of increasing reserves by infill drilling with horizontal and vertical wells.

Model Construction

The black oil simulation module (SimBest II) of The Petroleum WorkBench reservoir management package of Scientific Software-Intercomp was used to conduct this simulation study. SimBest II is a three-dimensional, fully implicit reservoir simulator which is capable of handling as many as three fluid phases and five components in a dual and/or single porosity mode.

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