Perm Journal of Petroleum and Mining Engineering (Sep 2019)
Estimated efficiency of radial drilling technology for Tournaisian production zones of the Perm Region
Abstract
The reservoirs of the Tournaisian deposits in the Perm Region are characterized by high heterogeneity of the geological section, low thickness and relatively low well productivity. For the rational development of such deposits intended to enhance the oil recovery ratio, various well interventions are required. The paper compares the effectiveness of such low-cost operations as acid treatments and radial drilling. It further considers the radial drilling technology in detail. Radial drilling operations at the Tournaisian deposits of the Perm Region oilfields are analysed. To assess the projected oil production, a graph of the actual decline in the incremental oil production from the time of operation over the years has been plotted. The paper presents the methods of estimating the well intervention effectiveness. The main method is hydrodynamic modelling. However, it has significant drawbacks in predicting the effectiveness of radial drilling technology. In the authors’ opinion, the optimal well intervention effectiveness forecast methods are statistical methods taking the complex impact of geological and technological parameters into account. In the course of the research, the Student's t-test was used to identify the main geological and technological parameters that have an impact on the efficiency of radial drilling. With the identified parameters and the linear discriminant analysis method, a predictive model for estimating an increase in oil production for the first year after the operation was built. For the wells selected as the training and test samples, the error of the oil output growth forecast for the first year after the operation was assessed. The errors in the forecast calculations were then compared to the forecast error estimation obtained using the hydrodynamic model. The output of the study is the developed method for determining the total incremental production using radial drilling technology.
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