Abstract
Multilateral wells were used in the petroleum industry to increase hydrocarbon recovery from oil and gas fields as a cost effective technology. The objective of this study is to develop new empirical inflow performance relationship (IPR) model to estimate the productivity of fishbone multilateral wells producing from homogeneous oil saturated reservoirs.
A simulation model was built including a fishbone well producing from two-phase reservoir with a typical fluids and rock properties. Sensitivity analysis was done to study the effect of initial water saturation, porosity, permeability, oil gravity and bubble point pressure on the productivity of the fishbone well. Moreover, the influence of the well dimensions such as the number and length of the branched holes and distance between them were evaluated by running many scenarios. Then dimensionless IPR curves were generated by plotting bottom-hole flowing pressure versus oil production rate.
The results of the normalized IPR curves showed that the most significant factor influenced the fishbone well productivity is the number of rib holes. New empirical IPR correlation in Vogel's form for fishbone multilateral wells in solution gas drive reservoirs includes the number of rib holes as a variable was developed. The New IPR-fish bone model showed good results compared to generalize Vogel's model.
The obtained IPR model from this work will significantly improve the productivity estimation of complex fishbone multilateral wells producing from solution gas drive reservoirs.
