TRANSITIONING FROM VERTICAL TO HORIZONTAL

WELLBORES

Introduction
Within the petroleum industry, the phrase "unconventional assets" has traditionally
referred to tight gas and coalbed methane (CBM). This has recently been
expanded to include gas shale, liquid-rich shale, and tight oil reservoirs.

2.2 Tight Gas Sands

In tight gas, the permeability of the formation is low enough that changes in fluid
saturations and relative permeability effects create an effective permeability to gas
of near zero.
The permeability range for tight gas systems typically falls within the range of 0.01 to
0.0001 millidarcy (md).
An interesting observation about these basin-centered gas reservoirs is that there is often
updip water contact creating the sealing mechanism.
"Sweet spots" exist within the large pervasive gas-saturated region, where much higher
permeability zones can be encountered surrounded by lower permeability sealing units. In
these conditions, changing fluid saturations and relative permeability effects can result in
an effective permeability in the sealing parts of the trap of near zero. Because of this low
permeability, hydraulic fracturing has been used extensively in these reservoirs for
stimulation to help enable economic production.
As the industry moves into a resource mode, selecting perforation intervals based upon
gamma ray logs, the process provides a tool that can help dramatically lower well costs by
high-grading various layers and only fracturing those capable of delivering economic gas
production.
At the same time, tools to improve operational efficiency for hydraulic fracturing have been
developed. One of the first significant developments was the introduction of composite
bridge plugs that can be easily drilled out with coiled tubing (CT) after a completion is
installed.
To overcome the CT limitations, CT-based solutions have been developed to hydraulically
jet perforations, allowing the fracturing treatment to be pumped down the annulus. This
system has proven to be very effective, providing a means of selectively treating individual
zones while retaining sufficient flow rate and pressure capability to stimulate deeper wells.
Following is a summary of several key points for tight gas systems:

 The trap mechanism is created through a combination of low matrix

permeability, changing fluid saturations, and relative permeability effects.
 Permeability is typically in the microdarcy range.
 Formations are often stacked and can be completed using vertical wells with
stacked completion intervals. This is, however, not always the case, and
cases exist wherein a single pay sand might be present.
 Reservoir quality is determined by effective porosity and effective
permeability.
 Porosity and fluid saturation define the best reservoir targets.
 Fracture designs are optimized based upon reservoir quality,
specifically effective permeability.
 In vertical or deviated wells, fracture initiation points are selected
based upon formation quality, usually determined by open-hole logs
and accessed through perforating or hydraulic jetting.

2.3. WHAT MAKES SHALE DIFFERENT?

 The shale formations that have proven to be capable of sustaining economic production
are best defined as organic-rich source rock systems. In this particular case, the reservoir,
trap, seal, and source are all contained within the ultralow permeability rock. The
depositional history, including burial depth and temperature exposure, is vital to having
created hydrocarbon within the source rock, much of which migrated out of the rock over
geologic time to create conventional reservoirs. 
Most of the source rock reservoirs are not true clay, but appear to be because of their
petrophysical appearance on the gamma ray (GR) log. The presence of organic matter
results in an elevated GR reading attributed to the presence of uranium and potassium.
Therefore, the units are considered shale when a common GR shale baseline cutoff is
applied.
Nearly all productive shale reservoirs are more accurately described as source rock
systems. In classical geology, source rocks are the place wherein organic matter is
converted to hydrocarbon, which then migrates out to be captured in conventional
reservoir traps. This process describes most of the conventional production in the industry
currently.
One of the key characteristics of source rocks is that they contain a significant amount of
organic matter, or kerogen. Total organic content (TOC) is a term used to define the
amount of kerogen in a source rock and is an important factor to determining if economic
hydrocarbon potential exists.

Source rock reservoirs are better described as complex petroleum systems than a
conventional reservoir. They are
  Highly laminated
 Have very heterogeneous properties from layer to layer
 Have an oil wet kerogen system
 Have water wet matrix components
 Have water wet natural fractures

Understanding source rock reservoirs is critical to achieving predictable and

repeatable results. Achieving this level of understanding requires an integrated
approach involving every aspect of subsurface understanding including the
following:

 Basin modeling
 Fluid migration modeling
 Geology
 Geophysics
 Petrophysics
 Reservoir engineering
 Drilling and completions

2.4. BASIN MODELING AND FLUID

MIGRATION MODELING
The burial history varies significantly between different reservoirs, but can also vary
significantly within a single reservoir. Formations such as the Eagle Ford in south
Texas have distinct regions that produce dry gas, condensate, or oil, depending on
the local burial history within the formation.

Basin modeling also provides the first insight to help determine the most
appropriate completion options for a given source rock reservoir.
Understanding what happens as burial depth increases helps better understand
some basic formation characteristics and completion strategies:

 Brittleness of the rock increases as the burial depth is increased.

 Liquid production decreases as burial depth increases (more gas production
resulting from deeper burial).
 Reactive clays decrease as burial depth increases. The reactive clays are
converted to less reactive clays at higher temperatures.

From a completion perspective:

 High brittleness favors water frac stimulation treatments, requiring larger

treatment volumes.
 High brittleness and gas production require smaller volumes of proppant to
provide adequate conductivity while in softer, more ductile rocks with oil
production require higher proppant volumes to achieve and sustain sufficient
fracture conductivity.

The areas of geology, geophysics, petrophysics, reservoir engineering, drilling

engineering, and completion engineering are discussed in greater detail later in this
chapter.

2.5. THE NEED FOR HORIZONTAL DRILLING

In summary, horizontal wells combined with hydraulic fracturing have created a

way to expose massive surface area within the source rock systems to achieve
and sustain economic production.

The fracture design parameters are changed, now exposing maximum surface
area and sustaining adequate conductivity as key design parameters.

In horizontal wells, the location of the wellbore within the stratigraphic layering of
the shale determines the fracture initiation point. The rock properties above and
below the initiation point determine how the created fracture will grow in terms of
height.

The location of the wellbore becomes critical for the fracture design, and exposing
as much surface area as possible in the highest quality portion of the reservoir.

Selective perforating has limited value, mostly in terms of avoiding perforating in

portions of the wellbore exposed to rock that is difficult to stimulate.

Changing from vertical wells to horizontal wells creates some significant challenges
regarding well placement and stimulation design. In vertical wells, it was relatively
easy to use open-hole log information to identify higher-quality reservoir sections
and then selectively perforate and stimulate the better reservoir sections within the
wellbore to achieve the best production results. In a horizontal well, however, the
properties that can be obtained from the well log are limited to the region along the
wellbore and do not provide a means of correlating the wellbore location within the
stratigraphic column within the reservoir without first correlating to a vertical well
log and modeling the reservoir to help identify the optimum place to put the
wellbore.

Earth modeling provides a means to create a three-dimensional (3D) model of the

reservoir mapping specific surfaces and facies in all directions to provide a means
to help with optimum well placement within the reservoir based on sweet spot
identification, formation dip, faulting, and other characteristics.

Earth modeling is a discipline that combines geologic, geophysical, and

petrophysical modeling to create a representation of the subsurface environment
that can be used to capture all critical information in a single environment to enable
drilling and completion engineers to make better decisions regarding wellbore
placement and completion selection and design.

2.6. EARTH MODELING

the earth model is a tool designed to model not only the reservoir attributes, but
also captures much more detail in the facies distribution and rock properties that
not only determines reservoir quality, but also stimulation potential (Dusterhoft et
al. 2013). Figure 2.10 provides an overview of a workflow that can be used to
create an earth model for a source rock reservoir. The key steps in this process are
described as follows:
 Information and data acquisition
 Identification and mapping of key geologic surfaces
 Creation of a very accurate velocity model to enable seismic analysis to be
converted to depth
 Incorporation of seismic into the geologic mapping to more accurately
integrate between wells
 More detailed seismic interpretation to include fault identification within the
reservoir of interest
 The use of prestack seismic inversions and anisotropic analysis to begin to
map distributions of key reservoir parameters, including mechanical rock
properties and reservoir attributes
 Detailed petrophysical interpretation and facies identification
 Integration of the facies interpretation through the incorporation of seismic
and petrophysics
 Identifying the necessary resolution for a geocellular grid size to provide a
representative view of the reservoir
  Creation and population of a geocellular earth model

As a tool to help visualize well all information captured in a single platform, the
geocellular earth model provides a means to capture and show many parameters
including the following:

 Reservoir attributes
 TOC
 Mechanical rock properties
 Planned well trajectories
 Actual well survey data
 Microseismic data
 Well log data

Having this information in a single location that can be accessed by the well
planners and completion engineers creates a valuable tool to help these engineers
make better decisions regarding well placement and completion design.

2.7. WELL PLACEMENT

One way to examine fracture growth behavior as a function of initiation point is to create a
representative stratigraphic column for a horizontal well using the earth model. With this
stratigraphic column, it is possible to populate a hydraulic fracture simulator and determine
the expected fracture height growth as a function of where the fracture is initiated. Figure
2.12 shows an example where the extreme vertical heterogeneity causes significant
changes in terms of fracture height growth behavior, depending on where the fracture is
initiated. In a horizontal well, the location of the wellbore within the reservoir determines
the fracture initiation point.

Where many people believe that hydraulic fracturing can help ensure full reservoir contact,
here, it can be seen that the created fractures might not be able to achieve the desired
height growth, exposing much less of the reservoir than desired. Understanding the
fracture growth behavior must then be used to improve well placement to help ensure that
the best portions of the reservoir are effectively stimulated and connected to the
wellbore. Figure 12.13a through c shows how the combined understanding of well
placement and fracture growth characteristics can be used to help ensure that the
reservoir is being most effectively contacted and completed.

In source rock reservoirs, there are often transition areas or layers of more ductile rock
that become effective fracture barriers, inhibiting fracture height growth. Placing the
wellbores to minimize contact with these portions of the reservoir can minimize problems
with fracture placement and maximize wellbore effectiveness. Figure 2.14 provides an
example (Buller et al. 2014) showing the impact that well placement can have on overall
well success.
In this well, six of 10 fracturing stages screened out prematurely. In this high-
pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) environment, this meant that a CT clean out would be
necessary after each screened-out stage to remove excess proppant from the wellbore so
that a plug could be set and the next stage perforated. This resulted in significant delays
and additional costs during the completion process.
Understanding which intervals to target and which to avoid in these complex reservoirs
can have a very dramatic effect on well performance and the economic success of a
project.

2.8. STIMULATION DESIGN

Stimulation design is dependent on several reservoir properties and characteristics. For
this chapter, the focus of completion design is optimizing fracture length and spacing
based on reservoir characteristics.
In conventional reservoirs, the optimum fracture length is determined by the desired well
spacing or drainage radius. In a source rock reservoir, however, the drainage radius is
actually established by the effective fracture length because the permeability of the
reservoir 
First, the effective drainage radius or stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) is determined by
the effective fracture length. The SRV corresponds to the total reserve potential that can
be accessed by the wellbore. Longer fractures equate to larger SRV, which, in turn,
equates to more potential reserves that can be produced from that well.
Second, sufficient fracture conductivity is necessary to create an effective connection back
to the reservoir. Although this is a very important parameter, the low permeability of these
reservoirs means that only sufficient fracture conductivity is necessary to effectively
produce the desired fluid from these reservoirs. An important consideration here is that
near-wellbore conductivity exposed to high drawdown pressures, proppant crushing, and
formation embedment will mean that additional conductivity should be built into these
designs to help ensure long-term productivity.
Third, fracture density or intensity maximizes the exposed area within the SRV, meaning
that higher fracture density makes it possible to accelerate the recovery of the accessed
reserves within the SRV.
Achieving the correct balance of fracture length, fracture spacing, and fracture intensity
requires careful balancing of sufficient early production rates and long-term reserve
potential. Because these variables are independent, the best way to solve this problem is
through stochastic modeling. This process links together the earth model, the fracture
simulator, and a dynamic reservoir simulator using an iterative tool to evaluate the impact
of multiple variables and determine the optimum solution.
2.9. A WORKFLOW FOR UNCONVENTIONAL
ASSETS
To truly optimize a field development, is best achieved through a process of modeling,
testing, and calibrating through the development of the field.
A reservoir-centric workflow (Dahl et al. 2014) has been created for unconventional assets
designed to accelerate learning and incorporate new knowledge in the most efficient
means possible to establish an optimized field development. This workflow can be broken
down into two distinct cycles. The first is more of an exploration workflow, which is a
process often handled by the operator. This is where the play is assessed and valued to
determine whether full field development should proceed, as shown in Fig. 2.17. This is a
relatively slow loop that is not updated often because this earth model is tied to the
reserves in place.

What the reservoir-centric workflow does is that it expands from this conventional asset-
based model and creates a continuous drilling and completions improvement loop. This
drilling and completion improvement loop is a very fast loop wherein the integration of new
well and completion information is incorporated quickly to incorporate lessons learned and
create a continuous improvement environment.
The use of a structured data environment here creates a solution that can be used
throughout the entire field development life cycle
The transition to the integrated asset model creates an environment that can be updated
continuously without having to alter the earth model that was used to value the property.
The integrated asset model creates the single platform that contains all relevant
information for well placement and completion design in a single place that can be
accessed by both drilling and completion engineers to allow them to make better, more
informed decisions regarding well placement, well spacing, and completion design.

Rather than focusing on reserves, this dynamic model is focused on capturing

information critical to enable drilling, completion, and production engineers make
better decisions. Reservoir properties, mechanical rock properties, pore pressure,
stress magnitudes, and other key parameters are captured and calibrated using
production history matching to maximize reservoir understanding.

Transitioning from vertical to horizontal wells requires improved understanding of

the reservoir to help ensure that the wells are placed in the best portions of the
reservoir and to optimize several other parameters including the following:

 Well spacing
 Lateral length
 Fracture length
 Fracture conductivity
 Fracture spacing