Optimal Horizontal Well Placement Technology to Improve Heavy Oil Production

Abstract

Optimal horizontal well placement and production optimization have been highly scrutinized. Development adjustments, such as drilling new infill wells and changing the injection/production rates of wells, can improve the performance of mature fields and leading to incremental oil recovery. Infill wells are new wells added to an existing field within original well patterns. Infill drilling can hasten oil production in heterogeneous reservoirs. If well patterns alter, fluid flow paths and sweep to areas with high oil saturations would be increased. Of course, this plan is difficult to be examined because reservoir performance is affected by many different parameters. Compared to vertical or low inclination wells, horizontal wells can deliver higher production rates, higher recovery factors and more efficient use of steam in thermally enhanced recovery projects for heavy oil. Maximum oil production is achieved when horizontal wells are placed near the bottom of the reservoir. In addition, cumulative steam to oil ratio is lowest when wells are near the bottom of the reservoir, meaning that the least volume of steam will need to be generated to produce a particular volume of oil. In this paper, the optimal horizontal well placement technology to improve heavy oil production has been studied.