Al-Gahtani, Abdallah M. (1997) Optimization of horizontal well completion : (position, length and perforation scenarios). Masters thesis, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.
Due to the large exposure to the reservoir, horizontal wells may be several times more productive than vertical wells. Hence, longer horizontal wells are expected to be more productive than shorter wells. This assumption is valid for openhole completions, however, it may not be always the case for cased, cemented, and partially perforated wells where the productivity of the well becomes a function of length and distribution of perforated intervals. The productivity of a horizontal well may not increase with increasing well length and perforation percentage of the horizontal section. Field experience with horizontal wells has shown that the productivity of a horizontal well may be restricted by frictional losses obtained in longer horizontal sections especially for wells drilled in high permeability reservoirs where frictional losses in the horizontal section may be comparable to the pressure drawdown across perforations. In this work the effect of horizontal well length as well as the length and distribution of perforated intervals on horizontal well performance are studied. A computer program based on analytical solution of the flow performance of partially perforated horizontal wells has been developed and tested against field data. An extensive number of computer runs to study the influence of the main parameters affecting the performance of horizontal wells have been conducted. Those parameters were the length, the perforated length fraction, the reservoir permeability and the fluid viscosity. A correlatino has been developed to describe the performance of partially perforated horizontal wells by comparison to openhole wells. Another correlation to estimate the optimum horizontal well length, beyond which the contribution of horizontal wellbore to the production rate is negligible, is also presented.
|Item Type:||Thesis (Masters)|
|Divisions:||College Of Engineering Sciences > Petroleum Engineering Dept|
|Creators:||Al-Gahtani, Abdallah M.|
|Committee Advisor:||Menouar, Habib|
|Committee Members:||Al-Majed, Abdulaziz A. and Al-Kaabi, Abdul-Aziz U.|
|Deposited By:||KFUPM ePrints Admin|
|Deposited On:||22 Jun 2008 16:51|
|Last Modified:||25 Apr 2011 09:38|
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