Analysis of Water Cresting in HorizontaI Wells

INTRODUCTION

Excessive water production as result of coning and cresting has been a serious problem in the oil and gas industry. Coning or cresting are used to describe the mechanism underlying the upward movement of water and/or the downward movement of gas into the perforations of a producing well. 

Efforts have been directed at understanding the mechanism of water coning/cresting in vertical and horizontal wells. These efforts have led to the development of correlations for estimating critical oil rate to avoid water coning/cresting, the time to water breakthrough at production rates above the critical rates, and prediction of water cut behaviour after breakthrough. 

The works on coning/cresting problems can be divided into two main groups: steady-state and transient solutions. The first group determines critical rate and the latter correlations for breakthrough time and post-breakthrough behaviour.