A coupling model of water breakthrough time for a multilateral horizontal well in a bottom water-drive reservoir

Abstract

A series of complex production wells have been applied in challenging reservoirs to maximize oil recovery. Multilateral horizontal well has received plentiful attentions in recent years. The multilateral horizontal well technology is especially beneficial in expanding formation drainage area, reducing water cresting and coning, increasing productivity, and postponing water breakthrough time in bottom water reservoir. Since Muskat and Wyckoff introduced the concept of water coning into petroleum engineering field, different models have been proposed to forecast the critical rate and water breakthrough time for vertical and horizontal wells. However, the studies of water breakthrough time for complex structured multilateral horizontal wells have rarely been reported. This paper proposes a new coupling model for estimating the water breakthrough time of complex structured multilateral horizontal wells. The proposed model took multiple factors into account, including the wellbore 3D structure, wellbore vertical location, and reservoir and fluids properties. In addition, a field case study was conducted by utilizing the methods that were proposed in this paper. The practical production data was compared with the results obtained from the analytical model, and this coupling model shows an excellent agreement with the results from the actual scenarios. The proposed methods in this paper can be utilized to forecast the water breakthrough time and breakthrough locations of multilateral wells in bottom water reservoirs.