Determination of well placement and breakthrough time in horizontal wells for homogeneous and anisotropic reservoirs

Gas and/or water coning encountered in many oil wells is a serious problem which results in lower oil production rates, lower oil recovery and increased lifting cost. In the present work, a simple-to-use predictive tool, which is easier than existing approaches, less complicated with fewer calculations, is formulated to arrive at an appropriate prediction of dimensionless breakthrough times as well as optimum horizontal well placement in homogeneous and anisotropic reservoirs as a function of dimensionless rate and density difference ratio. The proposed simple-to-use approach can be of immense practical value for petroleum engineers to have a quick check on estimating the simultaneous water and gas breakthrough time and the optimum location of horizontal well in the presence of both gas cap and aquifer for wide range of conditions without the necessity of any field test trials. In particular, petroleum engineers would find the proposed approach to be user friendly involving transparent calculations with no complex expressions for their applications.