“Fishbone” with eight branches. The unique well was built in the East Messoyakha

The unique multilateral well with eight sidetracks fulfilled on the technology “fishbone” was built in the East-Messoyakhskoye field. The length on the productive borehole made 5.1 kilometers, the total interval - 9.1 kilometers. The oil saturated layer on the drilling area did not exceed 12 meters.

“Fishbone” is the business card of the company “Messoyakhaneftegaz”, as it is said to the news agency “Sever-Press” in the board of corporate communications of the company. The design of multilateral wells of this type increases their productivity by 40% in comparison to conventional horizontal wells and allows directing each branch to separate oil-bearing areas without opening intervals with gas or water. Use of this technology is relevant for the geological structure of the East-Messoyakhskoye field, where reserves are located in separated sandy sediments with clay layers at the depth of less than one kilometer. 131 high-tech wells were built last year on the Russia’s northernmost mainland field on the Gydan Peninsula, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Each fourth is made on the technology “fishbone”. This year about 25 analogous wells with larger number of sidetracks will appear in the East-Messoyakha.

“The technology of “fishbones” construction allows increasing oil flow, improving economic efficiency of development of the field. Now the company proceeds to development of edge areas of the oil-bearing reservoir with the very complex structure of reserves. To maintain the high dynamics of extraction we shall continue increasing the amount of drilling with use of high-tech methods”, - the director general of “Messoyakhaneftegaz” Viktor Sorokin said.

As we should note, “fishbone” is a multilateral well with a special trajectory, in which numerous branches go from one horizontal borehole. As a result, the well resembles a fish skeleton in its shape - hence the name.