Abstract
During the past four years Saudi Aramco has used short radius horizontal and multilateral drilling technology to increase oil recovery, productivity and injectivity of existing production and injection wells. This was achieved by (a) sidetracking oil wells with thin bypassed oil column and drilling short radius horizontal holes at the top of the reservoir to control water coning and increase oil recovery, (b) drilling short radius horizontal holes across thin reservoirs and increase the wellbore flow area and well productivity, and (c) drilling multilateral short radius horizontal holes to increase the productivity and injectivity of existing oil and water injection wells completed in low permeability reservoirs. This paper presents well case histories that describe the drilling and completion operations and compare the performances of the horizontal and conventional wells.
