A new method for the construction and optimization of quadrangular adaptive well pattern

摘要

A proper well pattern will have considerable effects on the oil field production, with the ultimate recovery of hydrocarbon enhanced and the water production rate reduced. Comparing with triangular well pattern, quadrangular well pattern has more advantages in some cases and has broader application prospects. However, constructing an optimal quadrangular well pattern is more complicated and has not gain enough research. Facing this situation, a new method of constructing quadrangular adaptive well pattern is proposed in this paper. This quadrangular adaptive well pattern is generated using frontal Delaunay quad-mesh generation method. Boundaries, faults, and existing wells can be constrained and treated as control variables to determine the well spacing, a gradient-based algorithm coupled with reservoir numerical simulator is used to optimize the well pattern. Comparing to conventional regular well pattern, the new well pattern will adjust its shape according to the heterogeneity in different parts of the reservoir, achieving the optimal effect using fewest wells. Two different examples are applied to demonstrate the proposed methodology. The results show that the method proposed can be successfully applied to the construction and optimization of well pattern for large-scale reservoirs and improve the ultimate recovery significantly.