Multilateral-well technology is revolutionizing the way that reservoirs are accessed by wells. The ability to create wells with multiple branches that can target widely spaced reservoir compartments provides engineers unlimited options in optimizing economic extraction of oil and gas. Along with this opportunity comes the inherent complexity of these well architectures. Multilateral Wells is intended to illuminate the most important aspects of multilateral wells in a concise way and give readers practical tools they can apply in the design and analysis of multilateral wells, while also pointing to the appropriate literature for more advanced studies.
Contents:
- Reservoir geology
- Application of complex well architecture to common geological settings
- Drilling multilaterals
- Multilateral well completions
- Multilateral well performance
- Case studies
- Enhanced multilateral well performance
- Intelligent and smart well completions
- Multilateral well economics
About the Authors A.D. Hill is associate department head and holder of the Robert L. Whiting Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. Hill is an expert in the areas of production engineering, well completions, well stimulation, production logging, and complex well performance (horizontal and multilateral wells) and has presented lectures and courses and consulted on these topics throughout the world. He holds a BS degree from Texas A&M University and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, all in chemical engineering. Hill is the author of the SPE mono graph Production Logging: Theoretical and Interpretive Elements; he has been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer, has served on numerous SPE committees, and was founding chairman of the Austin (Texas) SPE Section. Hill was named a Distinguished Member of SPE in 1999.
Ding Zhu joined Texas A&M University as an assistant professor of petroleum engineering in 2004. Her main research areas include general production engineering, well stimulation, and complex well performance. Zhu is a coauthor of more than 60 technical papers. She holds a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Zhu has been a chairperson and a committee member for many SPE conferences and events and has served as a technical editor for the journal SPE Production and Facilities.
Michael J. Economides is a professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, and the managing partner of a petroleum engineering and petroleum strategy consulting firm. Previously, he was the Samuel R. Noble Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University and served as chief scientist of the Global Petroleum Research Institute. Before joining the faculty at Texas A&M University, Economides was the director of the Institute of Drilling and Production at the Leoben Mining University in Austria and also worked in a variety of senior technical and managerial positions with a major petroleum services company. Economides does a wide range of industrial consulting and has written extensively on a broad range of issues associated with energy, energy economics, and geopolitical issues. He appears regularly as a guest and expert commentator on national and international television programs.
