Significant achievements have been made in drilling and completing horizontal and multilateral wells over the past decades. The main advantages of this drilling technology are to increase the reserves, to enhance the production, and to extend the reservoir performance by reducing the pressure drop during production. This paper discusses the results of a numerical study performed using available correlations to determine the production performance of dual opposed laterals and horizontal wells. To facilitate the comparison, the total length of the sections exposed to the reservoir in the dual opposed laterals is equal to that of the horizontal well. Moreover an experimental model has been built in order to study the production performance of the above mentioned well configurations. The production performance of dual opposed laterals has been compared to that of a horizontal well using the numerical model and physical model. The experimental results show that the dual-lateral well configuration accelerates the oil recovery by 90% at the early stage of production (no presence of bottom water) compared to the horizontal well. It approaches a ratio of 40% as bottom water reaches the horizontal sections. Finally, the oil recovery using dual-lateral remains 10% higher than that of the horizontal well as water cut increases. Production performance of both configurations becomes equal in case of complete water production. The results of the numerical model show that the dual-lateral performs better Certainly the oil recovery of 10 to 14% higher compared to the performance of the horizontal well was noticed. Nevertheless, the results of the experimental runs indicate significantly higher recovery values at the early production stage than that obtained from the numerical model. This is due to the fact that the numerical correlations consider the well performance in the final stage of production. The obtained results confirm that dual-lateral wells are more efficient than horizontal wells, where the optimum horizontal length is exceeded. Details relating to the determination of optimum horizontal well length are presented.
