Modelling Multi-lateral Wells

H.-J. SU, W.S. FONG

Chevron Petroleum Technology Company

Abstract
A computation scheme was implemented in a general-purpose, finite-difference simulator to model multi-lateral wells.
Frictional pressure drop along the wellbore and proper fluid
mixing at lateral connection points were included in the calculation of the wellbore pressure profile for each lateral. The formulation is general and a lateral can be branched out from any point
along the main well path.
Since the production profile of each lateral is influenced by
the wellbore pressure distribution, the prediction accuracy
depends on a good wellbore flow model. The Beggs and Brill(1)
correlation and the homogeneous flow model were implimented,
along with a new model proposed by Ouyang et al.(2) which
included an acceleration term and accounted for the lubrication
effect due to radial influx. Well performance prediction results
using the three models were compared.
The impacts of different tubing sizes on the well performance
and the production contribution from each lateral were studied.

Introduction
Recently multi-lateral wells have been employed in off-shore
platforms or remote and hard to access terrain areas to save costs
comparing with drilling multiple vertical or horizontal wells. This
work is to study the pressure and production profiles along each
lateral using different pipe flow models.
The vertical standoffs of laterals to GOC or WOC, the optimal
length of laterals, the angles between laterals, the completion PI
values used in simulation, and the optimal number of laterals are
other important factors in designing multi-lateral wells. However,
these issues will not be addressed here.

Numerical Method
The completion production rate and wellbore pressure profiles
along each lateral are closely related. There is also interaction
between laterals. The fluid dynamics calculation inside the wellbore can be described as follows:

Pipeflow Calculation
There are many steady-state correlations available to calculate
frictional pressure losses. In this work, we implemented three
models, namely, the Beggs and Brill model, the homogeneous
model, and a modified homogeneous model (including radial
inflow effect) in a general-purpose reservoir simulator. The homoMarch 2000, Volume 39, No. 3

geneous model gave a better pressure match for the

Stanford/Marathon two-phase flow tests(3, 4). It was a very simplified model. For two-phase flow, it used a mixing rule to calculate
the density and viscosity values of the gas-liquid mixture. Then it
used the mixture properties in the single-phase fluid-wall frictional loss formula.
We did not use a transient pipeflow model(5) because it would
require much longer computing time.

Radial Inflow Effect

Rigorously speaking, the regular pipe flow calculation is not
suitable for open hole or perforation intervals due to the presence
of radial inflow from the reservoir. For turbulent flow, the radial
inflow provides a so called lubrication effect and reduces the
frictional loss(6, 7). For laminar flow (rarely occurring in oil field
practice), it increases the frictional loss(8). Here we used a formula
proposed by Ouyang et al.(3) to model radial inflow effect,

0.3978
f = fo 1 0.0153 Rew

where fo is the corrected frictional coefficient due to radial inflow

and f is the wall friction coefficient.
For the open hole, Rew can be expressed as
Rew =

v D

and
v=

Qc
D Lc

where v is radial inflow velocity. Qc and Lc are the completion

production rate and the completion length, respectively. D is the
wellbore or tubing diameter. is the porosity.
For the perforated interval,
v=

4 Qc
d12 n

where d1 is the perforation hole diameter and n is the number of

shots for a completion.

Acceleration
Since the radial inflow does not have the momentum compo51

TABLE 1: Total pressure losses excluding gravity, psi

(upper lateral at five days).
Cases
BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra

Completion 1
6.84
7.09
6.84
7.09
6.66

#2

#3

9.77
10.13
9.77
10.13
9.54

10.58
10.98
10.58
10.98
10.34

TABLE 2: Total pressure losses excluding gravity, psi

(lower lateral at five days).
Cases
BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra

Completion 1
5.78
6.38
5.78
6.38
6.10

#2

#3

7.50
8.12
7.50
8.12
7.74

7.98
8.61
7.98
8.61
8.20

tional losses, acceleration, and radial inflow effect and

expressed them in a unit of pressure per length such as psi/ft.
Note that we were not calculating the new wellbore pressure
profile at this point. The pressure loss gradient computation
started from the lateral at the lowest point and gradually
moved up.
3. Once the pressure loss gradient (psi/ft.) was obtained, a new
wellbore pressure profile could be calculated. The calculation started from the reference point (such as a pump location) and gradually moved downward.
4. Next a rate profile was calculated using the new wellbore
pressure profile.
5. Repeated steps 2 and 4 until the wellbore pressure changes
between iterations at any given point were less than a small
tolerance such as 0.1 psi.
FIGURE 1: Multi-lateral producer configuration at a cross-section
of J = 5.

nent in the wellbore main flow direction, we need to calculate

extra pressure losses to account for the acceleration of inflow fluids as follows:
Pacc = ( ui2+1 ui2 ) / gc
where ui+1 and ui are downstream and upstream velocities of completion i. is the mixture density, and gc is the conversion factor,
32.174 ft-lbm/(lbf-sec2) or 1 cm-gm/(dynes-sec2).
When fluids merge from two laterals and flow out to a new
direction, the acceleration term calculation becomes very difficult.
For simplicity, we propose the following equation for a T
junction:
Pacc = ue2 / gc
where ue is the downstream exit velocity.

Iteration Procedure
1. At the very beginning of the calculation loop, we neglected
the frictional losses, acceleration, and radial inflow effect.
We calculated the wellbore density based on the reservoir
fluid density. Then, the wellbore pressure and rate profiles
could be calculated.
2. Based on the previously calculated rate, we computed fricTABLE 3: Total pressure losses excluding gravity
(upper lateral at 195 days).
Cases
BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra
52

Completion 1
4.16
4.18
3.83
4.03
3.78

#2

#3

6.39
6.52
5.57
5.86
5.51

6.90
7.06
6.08
6.41
6.02

6. Then proceeded to next step in the reservoir simulation

calculation.

Hypothetical Example
The SPE 7th horizontal well comparative case study(9) was used
as a hypothetical example and the horizontal producer was
replaced by a multi-lateral well as shown in Figure 1. There was a
horizontal injector at the bottom layer. Each lateral had an inner
diameter of 2.4 in. and a length of 900 ft. The vertical distance
between upper and lower laterals was 40 ft. The maximum production and injection rates were 9,000 STB/D of liquid and 6,000
STB/D of water, respectively. The minimum bottomhole pressure
constraint for the producer was 1,500 psi. The rock and fluid
property data remained the same as in the comparative case study
and will not be given here.
The total pressure drops between the gathering point (cell
5,5,1) and each completion, excluding gravity, at five days are
shown in Tables 1 and 2. The simulation model cell definition can
be seen in Figure 1.
The pressure drop due to gravity head is not included in the
tables. BR-Acc and BR represent cases using the Beggs and Brill
correlation with and without the acceleration term, respectively.
Hom represents the homogeneous model. Hom-Acc-Ra denotes
the case using the homogeneous model with both the acceleration
and radial inflow terms. At five days, the solution gas still stayed
within the oil phase and it was basically a single-phase flow.
Therefore, the BR and homogeneous models gave the same
results. The inclusion of the acceleration term gave a slightly
higher pressure drop. The lubrication effect due to the radial
inflow can be seen in the above-mentioned tables. The production
TABLE 4: Total pressure losses excluding gravity
(lower lateral at 195 days).
Cases
BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra

Completion 1
9.67
11.15
9.57
11.07
10.69

#2

#3

12.48
14.01
12.36
13.91
13.37

13.24
14.78
13.11
14.68
14.10

Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

FIGURE 2: Production profile of upper lateral at five days.

FIGURE 3: Production profile of lower lateral at five days.

TABLE 5: Total pressure losses excluding gravity

(upper lateral at 600 days).

TABLE 6: Total pressure losses excluding gravity

(lower lateral at 600 days).

Cases

Completion 1

BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra

43.45
45.18
33.83
35.34
30.58

#2

#3

59.08
61.39
46.78
48.87
42.78

63.47
65.98
50.51
52.81
46.30

profiles between the five cases did not change much and are
shown in Figures 2 and 3.
At 195 days, there was about 4% gas saturation developed
around the producer and a two-phase flow occurred inside the
wellbore. The BR and homogeneous models gave different results
as shown in Tables 3 and 4. The free gas rate was small. The
increase of pressure losses in the lower lateral was caused by
increasing water rate from coning.
At 600 days, there was a large amount of free gas developed
due to reservoir pressure decline and the pressure losses due to
friction and acceleration increased drastically as shown in Tables
5 and 6. The gas saturation values were about 10% and 4% around
the upper and lower laterals, respectively. The pressure drop in the
upper laterals was much larger than the drop in the lower laterals.
The drawdown pressure values were about 25 and 50 psi for the
upper and lower laterals, respectively.
Although there was more than 10 psi difference in the calculated pressure losses from the BR-Acc and Hom-Acc-Ra models, the
production profiles from the two models did not show much difference as shown in Tables 7 and 8. The cumulative oil production
values of the two cases were close, 693 vs. 697 MSTB. The BRAcc case had more pressure losses, therefore produced slightly
less oil.
The varying contributions of the laterals under different conditions and time can be seen from the above-mentioned figures and
tables. The variations are mainly caused by the declining reservoir
pressure, the gas and water coning development, and the frictional
TABLE 7: Production profile comparison between
models (upper lateral at 600 days).
Cases

Rates

Comp # 1

#2

Completion 1

BR
BR-Acc
Hom
Hom-Acc
Hom-Acc-Ra

22.27
25.69
19.48
22.60
20.76

#2

#3

28.50
32.08
24.85
28.11
25.71

30.42
34.05
26.24
29.55
27.01

pressure drop. Therefore, the evaluation of a multi-lateral well

performance should cover the entire producing life and initial oil
production rate may not last long. For the Hom case, the initial oil
and water production rates were 5,565 STB/D and 3,435 STB/D,
respectively. At 600 days, the oil and water rates became 256
STB/D and 8,744 STB/D, respectively.
If the lateral inner diameter size changed to 4 in. for the BRAcc case, then the frictional losses became much smaller as
shown in Table 9. The rates were similar to the values in Tables 7
and 8.
For the BR-Acc case, if we changed the diameter size of the
upper left lateral to 0.8 in. and left the diameters of other laterals
to be the original value of 2.4 in., then the upper left lateral produced much less than the amount in the original case. It was interesting to note that the lower left lateral produced more oil as
shown in Table 10. On a total well rate basis, the case with
reduced diameter produced about 30 MSTB less oil. This multiTABLE 8: Production profile comparison between
models (lower lateral at 600 days).
Cases

Rates

Comp # 1

#2

#3

BR-Acc

Qo (STB/D)
Qw (STB/D)
Qg (MSCF/D)

0
1,345
44

0
1,223
41

0
1,143
41

Hom-Acc
-Ra

Qo (STB/D)
Qw (STB/D)
Qg (MSCF/D)

0
1,238
42

0
1,140
39

0
1,094
40

#3

BR-Acc

Qo (STB/D)
Qw (STB/D)
Qg (MSCF/D)

47
335
4,088

31
182
3,012

43
134
3,548

Hom-Acc
-Ra

Qo (STB/D)
Qw (STB/D)
Qg (MSCF/D)

47
391
4,113

33
274
3,224

51
221
3,950

March 2000, Volume 39, No. 3

Cases

TABLE 9: Total pressure losses excluding gravity at

600 days (4 inches ID).
Lateral
Upper
Lower

Completion 1
5.29
1.82

#2

#3

7.61
2.28

8.26
2.43
53

TABLE 10: Comparison of cumulative oil production

(MSTB) from different laterals.
Cases

Left
upper

Right
upper

Left
lower

Right
lower

BR-Acc
original

335

335

11

11

Reduced
diameter

181

388

87

12

lateral well design was not economical and it only served as an

example to illustrate the effect of tubular size.

Field Example
We applied this multi-lateral well modelling capability to a
field-wide simulation model. The oil zone was between a gas cap
and an aquifer. The average oil rate was between 1,500 to 4,000
STB/D. The water cut was between 0 to 40% and the GOR could
be as high as 8 MSCF/STB. The producing tubing size was about
3.5 in. ID. The simulation results using different wellbore fluid
flow options did not differ much from one to another. However,
we did observe that the load balance among laterals was constantly changing. For example, if gas conning occurred in one lateral
and the frictional pressure loss increased drastically, then the oil
production load was taken over by other laterals. The optimization
of the production load balance is a very interesting topic and
requires further research effort.

Discussion
This paper focuses on a numerical procedure to calculate the
pressure and rate profiles for a multi-lateral well. It does not
intend to provide general guidelines for multi-lateral well design.
In fact, each reservoir is unique and the existence of a gas cap
and/or aquifer can affect the multi-lateral well performance.
General guidelines may not possibly be developed for common
reservoir conditions. However, the new technique can be used as a
tool to optimize multi-lateral well design according to given reservoir conditions and production strategy.
Based on a rigorous treatment in calculating the wellbore pressure profile, this technique can calculate fluid production allocation for each lateral accurately. Multi-lateral well performance
evaluation without the rigorous wellbore fluid dynamics computation may lead to erroneous estimates.
This technique can estimate total fluid production according to
a given bottomhole flowing pressure, therefore it can help us
design pumping equipment. To estimate total fluid production
according to a given well head pressure operating condition, flow
tables will be required in simulation models to model pressure
losses between bottomhole and well head. Typically, flow tables
can be generated by various nodal analysis software packages. An
alternative method, without using flow tables, can be developed if
the rigorous wellbore pressure calculation can be extended from
downhole to well head and be included in a wellbore/reservoir
coupled simulation model. Phase changes between gas and liquid
phases and heat transfer between wellbore and formation need to
be included in the calculation.
As shown in Table 10, an improper tubular size can be very
detrimental to the well performance. Therefore, this technique can
help us select a suitable tubular size.
The production profile along the wellbore depends on the
drawdown pressure profile along the wellbore, and it is almost
independent of the bottomhole pressure. If the frictional pressure
drop is in the same order of magnitude of the drawdown pressure,
then it can alter the production profile significantly. In the hypothetical example, the drawdown pressure is in the range of 25 to
50 psi, therefore the 50 psi frictional pressure drop can really
impact the production profile and the well design. For low perme54

ability reservoirs, the frictional pressure drop should not have a

significant impact on well performance.

Conclusions
1. Five different wellbore fluid flow options to calculate pressure drop within the wellbore of a multi-lateral well had
been implemented into a general-purpose reservoir
simulator.
2. In the hypothetical example, five different flow options gave
very similar results for a single-phase flow situation. When
there was a large amount of free gas flowing into the wellbore, the frictional pressure losses increased drastically and
different models gave significantly different results in pressure drop. However, the production profiles from different
models were not drastically different.
3. Under normal field operation conditions, the acceleration
and radial inflow effects have a minor impact on multi-lateral well performance.
4. The frictional pressure drop heavily depends on the wellbore
or tubing diameter. Too small diameter size tubing can be
very detrimental to production. Without a wellbore flow
model, the reservoir simulator cannot quantify the wellbore
size effect.
5. From simulation results of a fieldwide model, the production
load balance of laterals changed from time to time and
requires further investigation.

NOMENCLATURE
f
Rew
D
Lc
Q
P

d1
n
gc

=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=

Ra
Acc
BR
Hom

=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=

friction coefficient
Reynolds number for radial flow, dimensionless
Wellbore diameter, ft.
Well completion interval, ft.
Flow rate, STB/D
Pressure, psi
Radial inflow velocity, ft./sec.
Perforation hole diameter
Number of shots per completion
Conversion factor, 32.174 ft-lbm/(lbf-sec2) or 1 cmgm/(dynes-sec2)
Fluid velocity inside wellbore, ft./sec.
Porosity, fraction
Viscosity, cp
Mixture density, lbm/cu ft.
Radial inflow effect
Acceleration term
Beggs-Brills model
Homogeneous model

Subscripts
acc
C

= Acceleration
= Completion

REFERENCES
1. BEGGS, H.D. and BRILL, J.P., A Study of Two-phase Flow in
Inclined Pipes; Journal of Petroleum Technology, pp. 607-617,
1973.
2. OUYANG, L.-B., ARBABI, S., and AZIZ, K., General Wellbore
Flow Model for Horizontal, Vertical, and Slanted Well Completions;
SPE 36608, Annual Technical Conference, Denver, CO, 1996.
3. OUYANG, L.-B. et al., An Experimental Study of Single-phase and
Two-phase Fluid Flow in Horizontal Wells; SPE 46221, SPE
Western Regional Meeting, Bakersfield, CA, May 1998.
4. OUYANG, L.-B., Single-phase and Multi-phase Fluid Flow in
Horizontal Wells; Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1998.
Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

5. SU, H.-J. and LEE, S.H., Modelling Transient Wellbore Behaviour

in Horizontal Wells; SPE 29961, International Meeting on
Petroleum Engineering, Beijing, China, 1995.
6. OLSON, R.M. and ECKERT, E.R.G., Experimental Studies of
Turbulent Flow in a Porous Circular Tube with Uniform Fluid
Injection through the Tube Wall; Journal of Applied Mechanics, Vol.
33, No. 1, pp. 7-17, 1966.
7. KINNEY, R.B., and SPARROW, E.M., Turbulent Flow, Heat
Transfer and Mass Transfer in a Tube with Surface Suction; Journal
of Heat Transfer, Vol. 92, pp. 117-125, 1970.
8. KINNEY, R.B., Fully Developed Frictional and Heat-transfer
Characteristics of Laminar Flow in Porous Tubes; International
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ProvenanceOriginal Petroleum Society manuscript, Modelling

Multi-lateral Wells, (98-108), first presented at the Petroleum
Society/SPE 3rd Three-day International Conference on Horizontal
Well Technology and Trade Show, November 1 4, 1998, in
Calgary, Alberta. Abstract submitted for review December 22,
1998; editorial comments sent to the author(s) May 10, 1999;
revised manuscript received July 12, 1999; paper approved for
pre-press July 22, 1999; final approval February 24, 2000.

March 2000, Volume 39, No. 3

Authors Biographies
Ho-Jeen Su is currently an engineering
advisor with Chevron Overseas Petroleum
Technology Company, Kuwait and has
been involved with the reservoir modelling
and management of the greater Burgan
field. His other interests include reservoir
simulator development and transient well
testing. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical
engineering in 1981 from University of
California at Berkeley.
William Fong is a senior research scientist
at Chevron Petroleum Technology
Company. He holds B.S. and Sc.D. degrees
from Caltech and MIT in chemical engineering. He works in the areas of reservoir
characterization, geostatistics and earth
modelling, and flow simulations.

55