A Non-Conventional Well Technology Approach to Improve Hydrocarbon Recovery from a Mature Field: Brown Field Case Study

Abstract

Hydrocarbon recovery from conventional reservoirs is currently at a declining rate, thus, the petroleum industry needs to find ways to economically produce hydrocarbon from mature and marginal oilfields in conventional reservoirs. Non-conventional well technology can enable the oil industry to do so. This study investigated how a novel non-conventional well technology coupled with a geomechanical approach can potentially improve hydrocarbon recovery from mature fields. Here, we utilized data from Brown field XX located in North Africa, and it is composed of distinct geological formations. One of the formations, "Upper Gir," is an ideal candidate for the application of the non-conventional well technology. We used a reservoir simulator (SURE) to create a dynamic model by incorporating geomechanical tools from a static model previously built using Petrel software. SURE was used to model five simulation scenarios, with each scenario featuring a different well type. The scenarios simulated are the base case, do-nothing, vertical wells, horizontal wells, and multi-lateral wells. The model developed in this study forecasted 25 years of oil production for each simulation scenario and analyzed the results. The results of our numerical simulation study revealed that for 25 years, the multilateral wells produced +0.9% and +0.5% more hydrocarbon than the conventional wells and the horizontal wells, respectively. We also observed a reduction in the average water-cut from 25% to 20% (achieved in the conventional-well scenario) and from 23% to 20% (achieved in the horizontal-well scenario). Our proposed non-conventional well technology has shown promising potentials to improve hydrocarbon recovery, stabilize reservoir pressure, economic returns, and eliminate the risk of water conning in mature fields.