Early in the 1980s, efforts started to be made to develop the now famous Barnet Shale. It required 20+ years of drilling and completion innovations to make it commercially viable. The Barnett was the starting point to develop other plays in North America such as at Fayetteville, Marcellus, Haynesville, Woodford, and New Albany. It is important to note that success in shale production has been the result of years of work of many companies (mostly small independent operators) drilling thousands of wells, learning from each other, and ultimately developing the so-called factory approach to drilling and completions.
Unlike the U. S., Saudi Arabia does not have the luxury of thousands of penetrations through its shale gas plays; particularly critical is the absence of other operators to share experiences and risks. Therefore, Saudi Aramco decided to explore its shale gas resources in the Kingdom by adopting a “technology driven” approach against the U.S.-based “factory” or “statistical” approach.
The “technology-driven” approach and the customized workflow applied in this project have minimized the time required to understand the reservoir and apply technologies appropriate for their completion. To date, this workflow has been utilized and calibrated with single well analysis. As sufficient amounts of data, especially 3D seismic data, which is currently being shot in the northern region of Saudi Arabia, becomes available, this workflow can be further enhanced and calibrated with a three-dimensional regional model. A wellbore calibrated workflow based on the pilot hole data, learnings from surrounding holes, and North American organic industry experience can substantially shorten the learning curve in Saudi Arabia.
This paper demonstrates a customized workflow developed for Saudi Arabian shale gas plays and shares the preliminary results of the project.
