Engineered Approach for Multi-Well Pad Development in Eagle Ford Shale

Gakhar, Kush; Shan, Dan; Rodionov, Yu. V.; Malpani, Raj; Ejofodomi, Efe; Xu, Jinyu; Fisher, Kevin; Fischer, K.; Morales, Adrián; Pope, Timothy Lawrence

doi:10.15530/urtec-2016-2431182

Cited by 21 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Annual shale gas production in China has grown rapidly over the past 10 years due to the development of drilling and fracturing technology. , However, the production from shale gas wells declines rapidly in the first year, , and an increasing number of infill wells are planned to be drilled and stimulated in the main shale gas producing areas to increase shale gas production to meet the national goal of 80–100 billion cubic meters by 2030. ,, Increasing the number of shale gas wells per unit area increases the recovery ratio, but it increases the risk of interwell interference, especially when the commonly used techniques of infill multibranch horizontal wells and multistage and massive hydraulic fracturing are employed. − It is known that the average cost of a shale gas well can reach millions of dollars, while the main way to recover the cost is gas production; thus, high yield is the goal of oil and gas companies. However, interwell interference is becoming a major obstacle to increasing production. ,− …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanism of the Production Impact in Shale Gas Wells Caused by Water Invasion during Interwell Interference

Wang

Jiang

et al. 2021

ACS Omega

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Interwell interference is a universal problem in shale gas development and can cause severe reductions in the productivity of producing wells. Studies have attempted to identify the root cause of interference in producing wells, but the mechanisms of production reduction and recovery in impacted wells are still not clear. Thus, an effective preventive strategy is needed for producing wells when fracturing is performed in adjacent wells. According to the mechanism of spontaneous imbibition and water drainage in shale mico- and nanoscale pores, this paper introduces the water–gas distribution during fracturing and production and reveals that water drainage in micro- and nanoscale pores is mainly controlled by the amount of stored gas and follows the order of pore size. Based on this analysis, the mechanism by which interwell interference impacts the production of producing wells is explained for the first time. It is concluded that the secondary water invasion caused by interwell interference completely blocks the pores associated with long-term gas production but has little influence on the pores that have not yet drained or have produced only a small amount of gas, and smaller pores face a greater risk of water blockage. The proportion of drained pores formed during long-term gas production determines the effect of interwell interference on production; when more pores are drained by long-term gas production, greater damage occurs to the productivity of the producing well. The suggestion for preventing interwell interference is to reduce the time interval between fracturing operations at two adjacent wells, thereby diminishing the reduction in production.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanism of the Production Impact in Shale Gas Wells Caused by Water Invasion during Interwell Interference

Wang

Jiang

et al. 2021

ACS Omega

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“…When drilling in proximity to the already producing wells, subsurface well collisions are avoided by using a wellhead monitoring systems (Stagg and Reiley 1991). Well interference of already producing or planned to produce wells can be minimized via well spacing adjustment (Wilson 2016;Suarez and Pichon 2016;Gakhar et al 2016;Schofield et al 2015). One of the worst types of interference which should never 1 3 be allowed to happen is the fracture hit.…”

Section: Introduction and Basic Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Minimization of the time to the first oil using pad completion techniques in low permeability reservoirs was achieved in (Schofield et al 2015;Rafiee et al 2012;Roussel and Sharma 2011). Optimization of a well pad development strategy by varying the vertical conductivity and reservoir conditions was also demonstrated in (Gakhar et al 2016). Another direction for higher efficiency in well pad development is parallel execution of jobs.…”

Section: Introduction and Basic Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agile methodology of well pad development

Abramov

2020

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

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Placing of wells in clusters with unequal number of thereof is an emerging concept of well pad development which still requires scrutiny even from a theoretical standpoint. The concept has its potential in improving economic efficiency of one of the most capital intensive processes in upstream sector of petroleum industry—the well pad drilling. To advocate and strengthen this profitability enhancing potential, this work integrates clustering of unequal number of wells into modern project management methodologies (agile project management), which has not been done before. It is shown that such symbiosis, which is called here the adaptive well pad development (or agile methodology of well pad development), has twofold benefit consisting of (1) managing of and accounting for uncertainties of real projects and (2) further improving economic performance of development projects in comparison with standalone well pad configurations with unequal number of wells. To exemplify these advantages, detailed simulations of well pad drilling projects were performed with equal and unequal number of wells in clusters. The simulation model accounting for more than 40 parameters and individual features of wells shows that combination of unequal well clustering configurations with adaptation of well pad designs to updates in project parameters results in significant improvements to the net present value (NPV). For three drilling scenarios studied in this work, the NPV increments ranged from 8 to 36%. Additionally, it was found that groupings with unequal number of wells consistently outperform groupings with equal number of wells in uncertain conditions, and NPV improvements from 10 to 20% have been obtained. These findings enrich understanding of the vast space of clustering schemes with unequal number of wells and demonstrate how these well pad configurations can be applied to use ever-changing environment to one's advantage. On basis of this computational study, it is now valid to assert with high degree of certainty and confidence that industrial deployment of clustering with unequal number of wells in combination with proper organizational measures results in boost to the NPV of well pad development projects at the level of several to tens of percent.

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