Comprehensive Mathematical Modeling of Horizontal Wells

Recently, most technological advances in the petroleum industry have been in the areas of horizontal wells. Horizontal wells have been reported to produce up to 10 times more oil than that produced by vertical wells. Even though recent advances in horizontal well technology have led to a large drop in drilling and operation costs, very little has been done to advance mathematical modeling of a horizontal well in order to achieve more realistic prediction capabilities. This paper describes a reservoir simulator capable of dealing with important features of a horizontal wells, including weilbore dynamics and near weilbore radial flow.