Flow Behavior of Horizontal Well Completed Within Two Sealing Faults Inclined at Right Angle

Abstract

Abstract At inception of a production rate regime, a horizontal well is expected to sweep oil within its drainage radius until the flow transients are interrupted by an external boundary or an impermeable heterogeneity. If the interruption is an impermeable heterogeneity or sealing fault, then the architecture of the heterogeneity must be deciphered in order to be able to design and implement an effective work-over or well re-entry to boost oil production from the reservoir. In this paper, therefore, the behavior of a horizontal well located within a pair of sealing faults inclined at 90 degrees is investigated using flow pressures and their derivatives. It is assumed that the well flow pressure is undergoing infinite activity, and each fault acts as a plane mirror. The total pressure drop in the object well is calculated by superposition principle. Damage and mechanical skin and wellbore storage are not considered. The main objective of our investigation is to establish identifiable signatures on pressure-time plots that represent infinite flow in the presence of adjacent no flow faults inclined at 90degrees. Results obtained show that the flowing wellbore pressure is influenced strongly by object well design, object well distance from each fault, and distance of each image from the object well. Irrespective of object well distance from the fault, there are three (3) images formed. Central object well location yields a square polygon, with two image wells nearer to the object well at equidistance from the object well, and the farthest image well to be 2d2. From the object well For off-centered object well location within the faults, a rectangular polygon is formed, with each image at a different distance from one well to another. Dimensionless pressure and dimensionless pressure derivative gradients during infinite-acting flow are (4.6052/LD) and 2/LD, respectively for all well locations within the faults.