Using Data Analytics to Assess the Impact of Technology Change on Production Forecasting

Authors
Frank Male (Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, University of Texas at Austin) | Chastity Aiken (Ifremer, Géosciences Marine - LAD) | Ian J. Duncan (Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2118/191536-MS
Document ID
SPE-191536-MS
Publisher
Society of Petroleum Engineers
Source
SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 24-26 September, Dallas, Texas, USA
Publication Date
2018
Document Type
Conference Paper
Language
English
ISBN
978-1-61399-572-3
Copyright
2018. Society of Petroleum Engineers
Disciplines
5 Reservoir Desciption & Dynamics, 2.2 Installation and Completion Operations, 2.4 Hydraulic Fracturing, 5.6.9 Production Forecasting, 2.1 Completion Selection and Design, 2.1 Completion Selection and Design, 2 Well completion, 5.6 Formation Evaluation & Management, 5.4 Improved and Enhanced Recovery, 2.2 Installation and Completion Operations, 1.6.6 Directional Drilling, 1.6 Drilling Operations, 2.5.2 Fracturing Materials (Fluids, Proppant), 7.6.6 Artificial Intelligence
Keywords
Decline Curve Analysis, Completion Optimization, Machine Learning
Downloads
8 in the last 30 days
360 since 2007
Show more detail
View rights & permissions
SPE Member Price: USD 8.50
SPE Non-Member Price: USD 25.00
Abstract

The nature of well completions in the oil and gas industry continues to evolve. Although the effects of completions and spacing on initial production are well reported, how they affect ultimate recovery and terminal decline is not well understood. Over the last decade, drilling on multi-well pads has become prevalent, spacing between horizontal wells has decreased, and hydrofracture intensity has increased. These developments have decreased drilling and completion costs, while increasing initial well production. Yet, the impact of the timing, spacing, and intensity of fracturing on terminal decline rates and ultimate recovery has not been systematically investigated.

In this paper, Bakken well production profiles are used to evaluate the impact of differences in completion design on the nature of long-term production decline. To evaluate these effects, production for 12,000 Bakken wells were forecast using a physics-based approach. Using descriptive statistics and advanced visualization, terminal decline rate and ultimate recovery parameters are found to depend upon date of well completion, volumes of proppant and water injected, lateral length, and well spacing. We utilize a tree-based machine learning approach to test predictability of completion parameters on terminal decline rate and estimated ultimate recovery.

Our analyses show that pad drilling and increased hydrofracture intensity are apparently associated with small increases in initial production rates but have led to larger terminal decline rates. For example, in the Bakken, the terminal decline rate increases by upwards of ten percentage points for wells with modern completions in multi-well pads. Since production life is dependent upon terminal decline rates, spacing and completions effects must be accounted for in type curves for wells in multi-well pads.

File Size  1 MBNumber of Pages   14

Arps, J.J., 1945. Analysis of decline curves. Transactions of the AIME, 160(01), pp.228–247.

Chen, H., Chiang, R.H. and Storey, V.C., 2012. Business intelligence and analytics: from big data to big impact. MIS quarterly, pp.1165–1188.

Curtis, T., 2016, Unravelling the US Shale Productivity Gains, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

Eftekhari, B., Marder, M. and Patzek, T.W., 2018. Field data provide estimates of effective permeability, fracture spacing, well drainage area and incremental production in gas shales. Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering.

Feblowitz, J., 2013, March. Analytics in oil and gas: The big deal about big data. In SPE Digital Energy Conference. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Friedman, J.H., 2001. Greedy function approximation: a gradient boosting machine. Annals of statistics, pp.1189–1232.

Griffin, L.G., Pearson, C.M., Strickland, S., McChesney, J., Wright, C.A., Mayer, J., Coleman, B., Roth, M. and Weijers, L., 2013, September. The Value Proposition for Applying Advanced Completion and Stimulation Designs to the Bakken Central Basin. In SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Hamlin, H.S., Smye, K., Dommisse, R., Eastwood, R., Lemons, C.R. and McDaid, G., 2017. Geology and Petrophysics of the Bakken Unconventional Petroleum System. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTEC).

Harkrider, J.D., Barham, M., Besler, M.R., Mahrer, K.D. and Micheli, T., 2014. Optimized production in the Bakken shale: south antelope case study. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTEC).

Harris, S.C., 2013. A Study of Decline Curve Analysis in the Elm Coulee Field (Doctoral dissertation).

Hough, E. and McClurg, T., 2011, October. Impact of Geological Variation and Completion Type in the US Bakken Oil Shale Play Using Decline Curve Analysis and Transient Flow Character. In Presentation at AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Milan, Italy, Oct (pp. 23–26).

Jacobs, T., 2017. Frac Hits Reveal Well Spacing May be Too Tight, Completion Volumes Too Large. Journal of Petroleum Technology, 69(11), pp.35–38.

Lafollette, R., Holcomb, W.D. and Aragon, J., 2012a, January. Practical data mining: Analysis of Barnett Shale production results with emphasis on well completion and fracture stimulation. In SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Lafollette, R., Holcomb, W.D. and Aragon, J., 2012b, January. Impact of completion system, staging, and hydraulic fracturing trends in the Bakken Formation of the Eastern Williston Basin. In SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Male, F., Islam, A.W., Patzek, T.W., Ikonnikova, S., Browning, J. and Marder, M.P., 2015. Analysis of gas production from hydraulically fractured wells in the Haynesville Shale using scaling methods. Journal of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources, 10, pp.11–17.

Male, F., Marder, M.P., Browning, J., Ikonnikova, S. and Patzek, T., 2016, May. Marcellus wells’ ultimate production accurately predicted from initial production. In SPE Low Perm Symposium. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Male, F., Gherabati, A., Browning, J.R., Marder, M. and Ikonnikova, S., 2017. Forecasting Production from Bakken and Three Forks Wells Using a Segregated Flow Model. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTEC).

Okouma Mangha, V., Guillot, F., Sarfare, M., San, V., Ilk, D. and Blasingame, T.A., 2011, January. Estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) as a function of production practices in the Haynesville shale. In SPE annual technical conference and exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Patzek, T.W., Male, F. and Marder, M., 2013. Gas production in the Barnett Shale obeys a simple scaling theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(49), pp.19731–19736.

Pettegrew, J., Qiu, J. and Zhan, L., 2016. Understanding Wolfcamp Well Performance—A Workflow to Describe the Relationship between Well Spacing and EUR. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTEC).

Piovesan, C.M., 2009, January. An Intelligent Plaform to Manage Offshore Assets. In SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Sharma, A. and Lee, W.J., 2016. Improved Workflow for EUR Prediction in Unconventional Reservoirs. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTEC).

Theloy, C., 2014. Integration of geological and technological factors influencing production in the Bakken play, Williston Basin. Colorado School of Mines.

Unnamed, Rystad Energy, 2016. Terminal decline observed from actual shale well data is higher than consensus. https://www.rystadenergy.com/newsevents/news/newsletters/UsArchive/shale-newsletter-august-2016/. Accessed May 12, 2017.

Wattenbarger, R.A., El-Banbi, A.H., Villegas, M.E. and Maggard, J.B., 1998, January. Production analysis of linear flow into fractured tight gas wells. In SPE rocky mountain regional/low-permeability reservoirs symposium. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Yan, C., Luo, G. and Ehlig-Economides, C.A., 2015. Systematic study of Bakken well performance over three well-completion-design eras. Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, 54(02), pp.95–106.

Zhang, C., Frogner, C., Araya-Polo, M. and Hohl, D., 2014, June. Machine-learning based automated fault detection in seismic traces. In 76th EAGE Conference and Exhibition 2014.

Other Resources

Looking for more? 

Some of the OnePetro partner societies have developed subject- specific wikis that may help.


  

PetroWiki was initially created from the seven volume  Petroleum Engineering Handbook (PEH) published by the  Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).







The SEG Wiki is a useful collection of information for working geophysicists, educators, and students in the field of geophysics. The initial content has been derived from : Robert E. Sheriff's Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Geophysics, fourth edition.