Directional Radial Drilling Increases Reservoir Coverage with Precise Wellbore Placement Resulting in a Significant Production Increase from a Thin Reservoir

Abstract

In many oil and gas provinces not only in Russia, but throughout the world, carbonate strata make up a significant portion of the sedimentary cover, and large accumulations of hydrocarbons are associated with them. However, the purposeful study of them as reservoirs for hydrocarbons in our country practically began only in the post-war years. In the special petrography laboratory carbonate rocks composing various stratigraphic complexes of almost all oil and gas provinces of the Soviet Union were studied, and in particular, Paleozoic carbonate strata of the Timan-Pechora province, Ural-Volga region, Belarus, Kazakhstan, ancient Riphean-Cambrian formations of Yakutia and relatively young strata of the Late Cretaceous of the northeastern Ciscaucasia. Carbonates are widespread sedimentary rocks. A very significant part of them was formed in the conditions of vast shallow-water marine epicontinental basins. A large number of works are devoted to the study of such deposits. However, issues related to the conditions of formation of carbonate sediments and their postsedimentary changes cannot be considered resolved, as well as the classification of the rocks themselves. The analyzed field is the Osvanyurskoye one. It was discovered in 2007. The field is located in the north-east of the European part of the Russian Federation, 2 km from Usinsk in the Komi Republic. The field is a part of the Timano-Pechora oil and gas province and it is a mature field (fig. 1). The objective was a 2.5m thick layer of the Serpukhov horizon.