Recherche pétrolière et gazière

Abstrait

Analysis of Wellbore Pressure Drop on Horizontal Well Performance

Ohaegbulam MC*, Izuwa NC and Onwukwe SI

The problem of wellbore pressure drop on horizontal well performance has been a concern to many researchers and the petroleum industry. Wellbore pressure losses in horizontal well not only increases gas or water conning tendency at the heel of the wellbore but also chokes oil production at the distant part of the wellbore especially for long horizontal wellbore thereby rendering some part of the horizontal well unproductive. This limits the usefulness of increasing the horizontal well length due to wellbore pressure losses along the horizontal well. A coupled reservoirwellbore model was developed in this work using Nodal analysis concept to investigate the performance of horizontal well by considering all the possible pressure losses in a horizontal well under inflow conditions. Sensitivity analysis of parameters that affect horizontal well productivity under wellbore pressure losses was performed. Results show that there exists an optimum horizontal well length beyond which oil production rate will no longer be proportional to horizontal well length and that wellbore pressure drop effects is severe in high productive reservoir with oil viscosity between 0.5 to 1cp or reservoir permeability of more than 200 md.