Templates for We l l Productivity Forecasts in the Monterey Producing Fields along the Pacific Tidelands and the OCS

By

I. Ershaghi (University of Southern California), M. Brickey, H. Syms, J. Barminski, and M. Ibrahim (Minerals Management Service)

The Monterey Formation is aerially extensive offshore California. It is a geologically complex formation with several prolific oil fields. Studies by Isaacs and others established a correlation between rock brittleness and lithological changes in a southeast to northwest trend. Such changes can influence fracture orientation and production characteristics of wells in the fields. Records for three decades of production history from six producing fields were scrutinized for detecting correlation of individual well productivities with field location along this geographic trend.

From analysis of diagnostic plots, a series if type curves was developed. These type curves show the uniqueness of the Monterey wells in terms of decline characteristics, water-oil ratio trends, and gas-oil ratio properties. The type curves are further correlated with bulk lithological characteristics of the formation as typified on mud logs and core data. These type curves offer a powerful series of templates from which prediction of well behavior and productivity forecast may be made for undeveloped Monterey reservoirs, with sufficient geological and oil gravity information.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90008©2002 AAPG Pacific Section/SPE Western Region Joint Conference of Geoscientists and Petroleum Engineers, Anchorage, Alaska, May 18–23, 2002.