Applying High-Power Lasers in Perforating Oil and Gas Wells: Sensitivity Analysis of Laser-Related Parameters During Laser Perforation in Sandstone
R. Keshavarzi and R. Jahanbakhshi
Laser perforation is one of the newest techniques recommended as an alternative for the conventional explosive shaped charge perforating methods in oil and gas wells. Considerable permeability increase and no need to have costly post-perforation operations to reduce the effect of formation damage caused by current perforation methods are the most important priorities of laser perforation over the conventional explosive shaped charges. In this paper a neural network approach has been applied for backward elimination sensitivity analysis of laser-related parameters during laser perforation in sandstone. For this purpose a feed-forward with back-propagation neural network was developed that predicted the volume removed due to laser power, lasing time and pulsation. The data is related to around 110 laser perforation laboratory tests on sandstone core samples. Finally, sensitivity analysis was done and the effectiveness of each laser-related parameter was determined.
Keywords: High-power lasers, perforation, artificial neural network (ANN), feed-forward with back-propagation, sensitivity analysis, sandstone, oil wells, gas wells