Description
Increasing Production with Better Well Placement in
Unconventional Shale Reservoirs - Challenges and Solutions
The idea that the stimulation process "will take care of the geology" in unconventional reservoirs is proving false.
Unconventional reservoirs are often regarded as resource plays with little demand for reservoir analysis beyond simple geosteering techniques during the development campaign. This leads to the common practice of stimulating wells with equally spaced stages and treating all the stages exactly the same, with no regard to the nature of the rock being treated. As a result, production can vary from each stage, with some stages either not contributing or doing poorly.
Clearly, the stimulation process alone cannot mitigate the impact of geology in unconventional reservoirs; however, mechanisms do exist for improving results in these reservoirs. Mapping the distribution of geomechanical properties for optimal stimulation is one example of unconventional thinking that can be applied. The practice of "steering to brittleness" or similar techniques can have a direct impact beyond simple well placement. Given a map of geomechanical properties along the wellbore, completion engineers can optimize the position of plugs or packers, and stimulation engineers can fine tune the design of the treatment applied to the rock. By re-establishing the link between production and geology, these methods can decrease the exploitation costs of unconventional reservoirs.
Please print and bring credit card receipt if you registered and paid on-line.
Please register before the deadline at noon on Monday, February 13th if you plan to attend. Walk-in registrations on the day of the meeting will be accepted for a limited number of seats based on the number of registered attendees or the maximum capacity of the Carriage Room. Thank you