Quadlateral Success Story in a Heavy-Oil Reservoir

Abstract

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 180433, “Quadlateral Success Story in a Heavy-Oil Reservoir,” by E. Livingston, D. Lee, M. Werner, B. Tejo, K. Wibisono, and S. Redman, ConocoPhillips, and D. Callis and C. Bostick, Baker Hughes, prepared for the 2016 SPE Western Regional Meeting, Anchorage, 23–26 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. This paper documents the success story of the first quadlateral completion for an Alaskan operator by use of stacked, rotatable, Technical Advancement for Multilaterals Level-3 junction systems. This well is also the first in the world in which the junction system is stacked more than twice in a single well. This quadlateral completion design is the product of targeting multiple formation layers from a single wellbore by use of openhole horizontals with slotted liners. The rotatable, multilateral junction system accommodates the increased number of laterals necessary for continued economic exploitation of the West Sak heavy oil reservoir. Introduction The West Sak in the Kuparuk River Unit Drillsite 1D area is a 300-ft-thick Upper Cretaceous shallow marine sequence comprising very-fine-grained single and amalgamated hummocky cross-stratified sandstone beds. The initial 1997 West Sak development drilling in this area consisted of all vertical producers. The thinner A4, A3, and A2 sands were targeted along with the D and B sands. These wells had fracpack completions for sand control and were supported by vertical water injectors. With the start of horizontal multilateral drilling in 2000, the focus shifted to the thicker D- and B-sand targets using sand-exclusion wire-wrapped screens. In 2004, the completion strategy changed from sand exclusion to sand management, for development to remain economically viable. The 1E and 1J projects used slotted liners and targeted the D, B, and, in some areas, the A sands from a single wellbore by use of dual- and trilateral completions.