Application of horizontal wells in steeply dipping reservoirs

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.A three-dimensional reservoir simulation study is performed to evaluate the impact of horizontal well applications on oil recovery from steeply dipping reservoirs. The Provincia field, located in Colombia, provided the basic reservoir information for the study. Reservoir simulation results indicate that for reservoir dip angles greater than about 40', this parameter has little or no effect on the primary recovery performance for homogeneous high-permeability reservoirs, The initial gascap size and the anisotropy of permeability (kv/kh ratio) are the dominant parameters affecting the oil recovery. For thin reservoirs, the location of the horizontal injector will not significantly affect the oil recovery. Simultaneous gas and water injection through horizontal wells can increase the oil recovery factor from almost 35% under primary production to 40%. A significant incremental oil recovery could be expected by employing horizontal wells for simultaneous gas and water injection. A comparison of the production performance of horizontal and vertical producers shows that a horizontal well can produce oil up to 2.5 times the oil rate of a vertical well, without a high rate of gas production. Also, the use of horizontal producers significantly accelerates the oil recovery. For the case of a homogeneous reservoir under simultaneous gas and water injection, the horizontal well system does not give a significant increment in the oil recovery compared to the vertical well system