A Technology of Hydrocarbon Fluid Production Intensification by Productive Stratum Drainage Zone Reaming

The paper proposes a new technology for fluid production intensification, in particular hydrocarbons, which is implemented via significant increasing of the local wellbore diameter in the interval, where the productive stratum is present. The proposed technology improves the well productivity by increasing the filtration surface area and opening new channels for filtering fluids into the well. The innovative, technical idea is to drill large diameter circular recesses in planes perpendicular to the well axis. After that, the rock mass located between the circular recesses are destroyed by applying static or dynamic axial loads. The required value of the axial force is provided by the weight of the standard drilling tool. As a result of the study, the analytical relations to specify the admissible radius of circular recesses and admissible thickness of rock mass between two adjacent circular recesses from the condition of safe operation are obtained. The numerical analysis carried out for typical reservoir rocks substantiated the possibility of well diameter local reaming twenty times. A special tool for circular recess drilling is developed and the principle of its operation is described. The advantage of the proposed approaches is the low energy consumption for well diameter reaming. Our technology will have special economic expediency for the intensification of production from hydrodynamically imperfect wells and under the condition of fluid filtration according to the expressed nonlinear law.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a new technology to increase fluid production, especially hydrocarbons, by increasing the wellbore diameter, drilling large diameter circular recesses in planes perpendicular to the well axis, and destroying rock mass between the recesses with axial loads. Numerical analysis supports the possibility of increasing well diameter reaming twenty times, and a special tool has been developed for drilling. The advantage of this technology is its low energy consumption.