Print this pageAAPG GEO 2010 Middle East
Geoscience Conference & Exhibition
Innovative Geoscience Solutions – Meeting Hydrocarbon Demand in Changing Times
March 7-10, 2010 – Manama, Bahrain
Drilling the Longest Horizontal Well in the History of Kuwait Using State of the Art Technologies
(1) Data and Consulting Services, Sclumberger, Kuwiat, Kuwait.
(2) Field Development West KOC, Kuwait Oil Company, Kuwait, Kuwait.
The Minagish field, in West Kuwait, is a North-South trending asymmetrical anticline, dipping from east to west with hydrocarbons contained in six major reservoirs ranging in age from Early Jurassic to Late Cretaceous. Mishrif is a tight, fractured carbonate reservoir of Upper Cretaceous age developed in a shallow marine deposition environment. The observed porosity in the upper reservoir layers ranges between 10-30%. The permeability measured from vertical wells is less than 17 milli Darcy. The second Mishrif layer is a fairly high porous peloidal packstone to grainstone sequence, composed of several mechanical sub-layers, mostly fractured and vuggy at the upper 15 feet “dual porosity system”. Production from this particular layer is related to the degree of fracture clustering, corridors and open faults which enhancing the permeability of the layer, thereby making it a good potential for horizontal well placement.
A high geological risk in horizontal drilling is coming from the formation dip uncertainties, which were expected to vary between 2.5-3 deg upward up to 4-5 deg downward, with an intensity increase close to the highly faulted areas. Due to the well complexity and uncertainties expected in real time drilling, the LWD tools selection for the lateral section were based on providing in real time solutions from deep directional measurements and inversion from the distance to boundary tool primarily and the formation dip information, fractures and faults identification from the resistivity images. In addition, other tools selected provide the basic petrophysical measurements such as Gamma Ray, Resistivity and Density-Porosity logs.
The company achieved a landmark in horizontal drilling with its third Mishrif horizontal well. The horizontal section at a length of 5312 feet was geo-steered in the sweet spot of the upper- most part of the Mishrif layer 2 (about 5-10 feet thick) using the most advanced technologies and high-resolution Q-seismic data.