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Early Development Assessment of an Unconventional Play: Drawing a Picture of the Reservoir to Guide Right-Sized Development

Craig Rice
Subsurface Integration Manager: Horizontal Wells Drilling and Completion Team. Apache Corporation, 2000 Post Oak Blvd, Houston, Texas, 77076.

With exploration success, the decision to move into a large-scale development with horizontal wells requires the integration of data from a number of subsurface disciplines. A number of parameters need definition:

  • What is the distribution of OOIP or OGIP per section?
  • How is the hydrocarbon resource distributed in the reservoir?
  • Is there a preferred landing zone for the horizontal leg of the well?
  • Can all or part of the reservoir be accessed with the planned hydraulic fracture stimulation?
  • With the known reservoir parameters what is the expected production profile from a horizontal well and how does that relate to multi-well development?
  • What data needs to be collected (or assembled) during the early stages of development to accurately depict the major characteristics of the reservoir in the development area?

    • This talk describes a multi-discipline workflow employed to address the above questions. The goal is to evolve an integrated picture of the reservoir based upon the Geological, Geophysical, and Petrophysical description. This picture provides the framework from which Completion and Reservoir Engineering models are constructed. From these, decisions on where to land the wells and how best to complete them are made. Uncertainties in these models identify data ‘gaps’ needing additional definition.

    The initial horizontal wells are benchmarked against these parameters and adjustments made to better define a type-well. The goal is to rapidly evolve to pad trials in which the variables of well-length, well-spacing, landing zone, and frac design can assessed against a back drop of known reservoir parameters. The expectation is to reduce the cycle time to design a multi-well development that is ‘right-sized’ for optimal recovery factor and return on investment.

    AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90186 © AAPG Geoscience Technology Workshop, Hydrocarbon Charge Considerations in Liquid-Rich Unconventional Petroleum Systems, November 5, 2013, Vancouver, BC, Canada