Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia

© 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers Now that most of the conventional reservoirs are being depleted at a rapid pace, the focus is on unconventional reservoirs like tight gas reservoirs. Due to the heterogeneous nature and low permeability of unconventional reservoirs, they require a huge number o...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Al-Fatlawi, O., Aswin, R., Roy, V., Hossain, Mofazzal, Kabir, A.
Format: Conference Paper
Published: 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/70227
_version_ 1848762249322168320
author Al-Fatlawi, O.
Aswin, R.
Roy, V.
Hossain, Mofazzal
Kabir, A.
author_facet Al-Fatlawi, O.
Aswin, R.
Roy, V.
Hossain, Mofazzal
Kabir, A.
author_sort Al-Fatlawi, O.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers Now that most of the conventional reservoirs are being depleted at a rapid pace, the focus is on unconventional reservoirs like tight gas reservoirs. Due to the heterogeneous nature and low permeability of unconventional reservoirs, they require a huge number of wells to hit all the isolated hydrocarbon zones. Infill drilling is one of the most common and effective methods of increasing the recovery, by reducing the well spacing and increasing the sweep efficiency. However, the problem with drilling such a large number of wells is the determination of the optimum location for each well that ensures minimum interference between wells, and accelerates the recovery from the field. Detailed 3-D numerical reservoir modelling is the most trusted method to determine the optimum locations of the infill wells, but it is time consuming and expensive. Therefore, the industry is on the lookout for methods that are fast and effective. Over the last few decades, researcher have come up with techniques like moving window, rapid inversion, Infill Well Locator Calculator (IWLC) etc. for infill drilling optimization of tight resources. In this paper reservoir simulation modelling was combined with the Moving Window Method (MWM) to develop an optimum infill-drilling plan for Whicher Range (WR) Tight-gas Field in Western Australia. The accuracy and effectiveness of developed optimum plan are justified through comparative studies using standard reservoir simulation model; which demonstrates that the proposed plan effectively predicts the optimum number of wells including the production rate of each wells similar to that obtained from standard reservoir simulation studies. It is also inferred that reservoir simulation combined with MWM requires less data and much simpler as well as faster compared to standard reservoir simulation for optimizing an infill drilling plan for alike of Whicher Range tight gas field.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:44:34Z
format Conference Paper
id curtin-20.500.11937-70227
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:44:34Z
publishDate 2017
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-702272018-08-08T04:43:54Z Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia Al-Fatlawi, O. Aswin, R. Roy, V. Hossain, Mofazzal Kabir, A. © 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers Now that most of the conventional reservoirs are being depleted at a rapid pace, the focus is on unconventional reservoirs like tight gas reservoirs. Due to the heterogeneous nature and low permeability of unconventional reservoirs, they require a huge number of wells to hit all the isolated hydrocarbon zones. Infill drilling is one of the most common and effective methods of increasing the recovery, by reducing the well spacing and increasing the sweep efficiency. However, the problem with drilling such a large number of wells is the determination of the optimum location for each well that ensures minimum interference between wells, and accelerates the recovery from the field. Detailed 3-D numerical reservoir modelling is the most trusted method to determine the optimum locations of the infill wells, but it is time consuming and expensive. Therefore, the industry is on the lookout for methods that are fast and effective. Over the last few decades, researcher have come up with techniques like moving window, rapid inversion, Infill Well Locator Calculator (IWLC) etc. for infill drilling optimization of tight resources. In this paper reservoir simulation modelling was combined with the Moving Window Method (MWM) to develop an optimum infill-drilling plan for Whicher Range (WR) Tight-gas Field in Western Australia. The accuracy and effectiveness of developed optimum plan are justified through comparative studies using standard reservoir simulation model; which demonstrates that the proposed plan effectively predicts the optimum number of wells including the production rate of each wells similar to that obtained from standard reservoir simulation studies. It is also inferred that reservoir simulation combined with MWM requires less data and much simpler as well as faster compared to standard reservoir simulation for optimizing an infill drilling plan for alike of Whicher Range tight gas field. 2017 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/70227 restricted
spellingShingle Al-Fatlawi, O.
Aswin, R.
Roy, V.
Hossain, Mofazzal
Kabir, A.
Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title_full Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title_fullStr Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title_full_unstemmed Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title_short Optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in Australia
title_sort optimization of infill drilling in whicher range field in australia
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/70227