Author(s)

M.N. Mohamad-Ibrahim & D.T. Numbere

Abstract

This paper presents a Boundary Element approach for predicting the productivity of oil wells located arbitrarily in complex configurations within irregularly shaped reservoirs. The integral equations are written for boundary points as well as for the locations of the wells which are treated as point sources and sinks with specified pressures but unknown strengths. Using this approach, the solution to the resulting matrix gives the values of the nodal boundary pressures and their normal derivatives, as well as the unknown flow rates of all the wells. Example BEM solutions are verified against known analytical solutions. Applications to regular four-spot, five-spot, seven-spot and nine-spot drilling patterns in order to determine which pattern produces the most oil for a given field are

Keywords