The Eagle Ford shale in south Texas is the one of the most recent developments in unconventional reservoir exploration. Numerous existing completion methods have been applied in this nano-darcy formation with various degrees of success. The horizontal Eagle Ford wells in the northeast area of the current Eagle Ford play (DeWitt County) require a completion strategy that is reservoir specific. The production in this area has a high liquid/gas ratio and presents different challenges for commercial development than those in the typical “high-rate water frac” completions associated with dry-gas shale stimulation theory. Previous high-rate water frac completions in this area typically associated with the “Barnett-style shale stimulation” achieved poor results. Core analysis shows that a low Young's Modulus (YM) (soft rock), high clay content, and the potential for high liquid-hydrocarbon production require the need for a different completion strategy. Swelling formation clays and proppant embedment were formation issues to consider along with the multiphase hydrocarbon production. Higher conductivity fractures would be required, but various unknowns existed: How many frac stages should be pumped?How much proppant should be pumped on each frac stage?What type of proppant should be used?What mesh proppant should be used?What perforation scheme was needed?What type of completion fluids should be used?What injection rate was needed?How would fracture-injection issues be handled? This paper discusses how a collaborative, engineered approach was applied to the completion of the Eagle Ford shale to deliver a commercial asset. To address the unknowns, the methodology included geologic and reservoir understanding applied to the stimulation design and execution. The stimulation resulted in hydrocarbon production that exceeded expectations. Comparative well results will be discussed.

The Eagle Ford shale play is an emerging shale play that extends from the Mexican border in south Texas all the way to the East Texas Basin. Developing the play into an economically viable venture encompasses numerous challenges to include: • The shale production characteristics vary across the play. • The shale is producing dry gas in some areas and wet gas or oil in others. • Some regions are naturally fractured, while others are not. • The play must be hydraulically fractured to be economically productive; however, what completion techniques have been successful in one well will not necessarily work in another, even in the same field. Thus, it is critical to consider the local-area reservoir characteristics when trying to complete each well. This paper focuses primarily on understanding the reservoir by integrating various data-acquisition and reservoircharacterization techniques (i.e., mudlogs, basic openhole logs, and advanced logs, such as Dipole sonic, geochemical, NMR (magnetic resonance-imaging log), and core analysis) to determine the shale's petrophysical characteristics and to thus build a locally validated petrophysical model (shale log) that can be applied to future wells with reduced data-acquisition programs to grade the reservoir. The model is used to ascertain the surrounding lithology and clay typing in addition to the hydrocarbon resource potential of the well. Furthermore, this tool can be used to answer completion questions, such as where the organic-rich zones are located, where to perforate, what the geomechanical issues are, how "fracable" the rock is, and how plastic the rock is.

The Eagle Ford shale play located in south Texas is in its infancy in terms of development compared to other shale plays in the USA. The Barnett shale has been commercially productive since the1980s and the Haynesville has been commercially productive since 2005, whereas the Eagle Ford has only been producing since 2009. Thus, there is significant risk involved in drilling a horizontal Eagle Ford well because the reservoir's characteristics change depending on the location, producing gas, gas condensate, and oil. A few operators have successfully made the transition in the last year from vertical to horizontal-wellbore programs in the gas window and there is a need to shorten the learning curve to successfully develop the play. One such method involves the use of wireline logs, such as cased-hole pulsed-neutron logs (PNL), run in the lateral to determine the reservoir characteristics and to aid in tailoring the hydraulic fracture treatment. Following this horizontal well's completion, a review of the mud log, cased-hole PNL, and tracer and production logs in the lateral in conjunction with the stimulation treatment was conducted to determine which zones produced as expected and, more importantly, which zones did not produce as expected. This paper focuses on reviewing all log data pertaining to this well in combination with the completion treatment and production to identify possible relationships between production performance, the reservoir and the completion, and moreover to determine what would be done differently in future wells, in addition to reviewing additional offset well-data.