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Transitioning From Vertical To Horizontal Wellbores
Transitioning From Vertical To Horizontal Wellbores
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.
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
Basin modeling
Fluid migration modeling
Geology
Geophysics
Petrophysics
Reservoir engineering
Drilling and completions
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well spacing
Lateral length
Fracture length
Fracture conductivity
Fracture spacing