Application of Horizontal Wells to Reduce Water Production during Gel Treatment

Abstract

It is well known that gel treatment has outstanding potential to delay water breakthrough and reduce water production. However, it causes the decrease of oil production by permeability reduction, even though it is not as much as reduction of water production. For this reason, to improve oil production with substantial reduction of water production, performances of gel treatments through the combination of horizontal and/or vertical wells were assessed and compared. An extensive numerical simulation was executed for four different well configurations under gel treatment associated with waterflood to accomplish the purpose of this study. Performances were compared according to cumulative oil recovery and water-oil ratio at the production well for different systems. Though all of well configurations considered in this study effectively decreased the water production compared with waterflood, applications of horizontal wells led to much higher oil recovery than vertical well because of improved sweep efficiency. Based on these results, the potential of horizontal wells was examined through different scenarios in combinations of injection and production wells. Furthermore, various well lengths of injectors or producers were assessed for horizontal wells. Because cross-flow between layers dominates performance of gel treatment, effects of vertical permeability were also investigated in application of gel treatment with horizontal well. Longer wells and higher cross-flow results in better performance. This study represents that effectiveness of horizontal wells for gel treatment even for reservoirs having dominant cross-flow.