History of a Duolateral Well in the Mittelplate Oilfield Germany - From Plan to Perforation

The Mittelplate oilfield is located in the tidal flats of the German Wadden Sea National Park and operated for almost 30 years by DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG as operator and Wintershall Holding GmbH. More than 35 million m³ of oil (220 million bbl.) have been produced from four middle Jurassic sandstone reservoirs as of December 2016.

Multilateral wells have been applied successfully to develop the field. The well Mittelplate-A 26 is the fourth multilateral well drilled in the field. The target reservoir of the well was the middle Jurassic Dogger beta. The depth range of the Dogger beta reservoir is between 2400 m and 3000 m TVD and consists of 2 to 3 sandstone layers, having a thickness between 2 and 4 meter each. Intense compartmentalisation, high fault throws and pinching-out of one of the sandstones was impeding the reservoir exposure.

The well was geosteered horizontally over 1910 m in the Mainbore and 1120 m in the Lateral and confirmed the assumptions of thickness trend, fault throw and pressure regime allowing a total reservoir section of 2460 m to be perforated.