Well testing of radial jet drilling wells in geothermal reservoirs

Abstract Radial Jet Drilling (RJD) is a stimulation technique to increase a well’s performance through creation of multiple laterals of up to 100 m long. The technique has been used in the petroleum industry for several years and recently also for geothermal reservoirs. Interpretation of well tests of a well with multiple laterals may become problematic if the effect of the laterals is not correctly modelled. In this work it is investigated what the impact of RJD laterals is on the pressure transients for both single and dual porosity reservoirs. A semi-analytic model for the calculation of the transient well pressure that accounts explicitly for the RJD well geometry is developed and validated with a detailed numerical simulation. The results show that changes in the lateral configuration affect the pressure transients significantly. In particular for single porosity media, the laterals affect the pressure transients in ways that cannot be captured by representing the stimulation by a skin factor. Since the RJD process is unsteered and the exact configuration of the laterals uncertain, the model may potentially assist in estimating the effectiveness of the stimulation such as the achieved reach of the laterals. Although the work was carried out in the context of RJD application in geothermal reservoirs, the presented model approach can be extended to multi-lateral wells in oil or gas reservoirs.