Investigating the effect of heterogeneity on infill wells

Abstract

In recent years, improving oil recovery (IOR) has become an important subject for the petroleum industry. One IOR method is infill drilling, which improves hydrocarbon recovery from virgin zones of the reservoir. Determining the appropriate location for the infill wells is very challenging and greatly depends on different factors such as the reservoir heterogeneity. This study aims to investigate the effect of reservoir heterogeneity on the location of infill well. In order to characterize the effect of heterogeneity on infill well locations, some geostatistical methods, e.g., sequential gaussian simulation, have been applied to generate various heterogeneity models. In particular, different correlation ranges (R) were used to observe the effect of heterogeneity. Results revealed that an increase in correlation ranges will lead to (1) a higher field oil production total, and (2) a faster expansion of the drainage radius which consequently reduced the need for infill wells. The results of this study will help engineers to appropriately design infill drilling schemes.