Experimental Study on Electrolytic Simulation of Production Capacity Interference in Asymmetric Fishbone Wells

As a type of multilateral wells, fishbone wells have the advantages of expanding oil drainage areas and increasing single well controlled reserves. However, there exists obvious productivity interference between branches of fishbone wells. In order to study the influence of fishbone wellbore structural parameters on productivity interference between branches, the method of water-electricity simulation experiments was adopted in this paper. The concepts of productivity interference coefficient and pressure propagation coefficient were proposed. The dependence of the productivity interference coefficient on wellbore morphological parameters was quantified. Research shows that the productivity interference coefficients of fishbone wells increase with the increase in the number of branches and decrease with the increase in branch length and branch angle. The productivity interference phenomenon between branches is caused by pressure interference. Increasing branch spacing by changing morphological parameters is the key to controlling productivity interference. The research results verify the productivity prediction model of fishbone wells and they also have important guiding significance for reasonable well placement and optimization design.