New Technology in the Bakken Play Increases the Number of Stages in Packer/Sleeve Completions

Buffington, Neil; Kellner, Justin; King, J. F.; David, Betsy; Demarchos, A.S.; Shepard, Louis

doi:10.2523/133540-ms

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Notice that the magnitude of τ is lower and that of M is higher for the new wells. These shifts are caused by the improvements of well completion technology over the last decade [49][50][51][52][53][54][55], i.e., by bigger hydrofractures, fewer clusters per stage, more fracture stages, etc. Table A3 details the interference times, τ, and the masses of oil in place, M, for the four well classes: (1) interfering, (2) non-interfering, (3) refracs, and (4) newly completed wells in the Middle Bakken and Upper Three Forks.…”

Section: √Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that halving the interfracture distance decreases τ four-fold. Historically, the number of hydrofracture stages in the Bakken has increased over time from 8 stages in 2007 [52], to 18 stages in 2009 [53], 35 stages in 2016 [54], and to as many as 60 stages in 2019 [55]. The lateral length has also doubled from 1.5 km (5000 ft) in 2005 to 3 km (10,000 ft) in 2015.…”

Section: Figure 12mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Physical Scaling of Oil Production Rates and Ultimate Recovery from All Horizontal Wells in the Bakken Shale

2020

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A recent study by the Wall Street Journal reveals that the hydrofractured horizontal wells in shales have been producing less than the industrial forecasts with the empirical hyperbolic decline curve analysis (DCA). As an alternative to DCA, we introduce a simple, fast and accurate method of estimating ultimate recovery in oil shales. We adopt a physics-based scaling approach to analyze oil rates and ultimate recovery from 14,888 active horizontal oil wells in the Bakken shale. To predict the Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR), we collapse production records from individual horizontal shale oil wells onto two segments of a master curve: (1) We find that cumulative oil production from 4845 wells is still growing linearly with the square root of time; and (2) 6401 wells are already in exponential decline after approximately seven years on production. In addition, 2363 wells have discontinuous production records, because of refracturing or changes in downhole flowing pressure, and are matched with a linear combination of scaling curves superposed in time. The remaining 1279 new wells with less than 12 months on production have too few production records to allow for robust matches. These wells are scaled with the slopes of other comparable wells in the square-root-of-time flow regime. In the end, we predict that total ultimate recovery from all existing horizontal wells in Bakken will be some 4.5 billion barrels of oil. We also find that wells completed in the Middle Bakken formation, in general, produce more oil than those completed in the Upper Three Forks formation. The newly completed longer wells with larger hydrofractures have higher initial production rates, but they decline faster and have EURs similar to the cheaper old wells. There is little correlation among EUR, lateral length, and the number and size of hydrofractures. Therefore, technology may not help much in boosting production of new wells completed in the poor immature areas along the edges of the Williston Basin. Operators and policymakers may use our findings to optimize the possible futures of the Bakken shale and other plays. More importantly, the petroleum industry may adopt our physics-based method as an alternative to the overly optimistic hyperbolic DCA that yields an ‘illusory picture’ of shale oil resources.

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confidence: 99%

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Physical Scaling of Oil Production Rates and Ultimate Recovery from All Horizontal Wells in the Bakken Shale

2020

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Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale

2019

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We aim to replace the current industry-standard empirical forecasts of oil production from hydrofractured horizontal wells in shales with a statistically and physically robust, accurate and precise method of matching historic well performance and predicting well production for up to two more decades. Our Bakken oil forecasting method extends the previous work on predicting fieldwide gas production in the Barnett shale and merges it with our new scaling of oil production in the Bakken. We first divide the existing 14,678 horizontal oil wells in the Bakken into 12 static samples in which reservoir quality and completion technologies are similar. For each sample, we use a purely data-driven non-parametric approach to arrive at an appropriate generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution of oil production from that sample's dynamic well cohorts with at least 1, 2, 3, . . . years on production. From these well cohorts, we stitch together the P 50 , P 10 , and P 90 statistical well prototypes for each sample. These statistical well prototypes are conditioned by well attrition, hydrofracture deterioration, pressure interference, well interference, progress in technology, and so forth. So far, there has been no physical scaling. Now we fit the parameters of our physical scaling model to the statistical well prototypes, and obtain a smooth extrapolation of oil production that is mechanistic, and not just a decline curve. At late times, we add radial inflow from the outside. By calculating the number of potential wells per square mile of each Bakken region (core and noncore), and scheduling future drilling programs, we stack up the extended well prototypes to obtain the plausible forecasts of oil production in the Bakken. We predict that Bakken will ultimately produce 5 billion barrels of oil from the existing wells, with the possible addition of 2 and 6 billion barrels from core and noncore areas, respectively.

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New Technology in the Bakken Play Increases the Number of Stages in Packer/Sleeve Completions

Cited by 2 publications

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Physical Scaling of Oil Production Rates and Ultimate Recovery from All Horizontal Wells in the Bakken Shale

Physical Scaling of Oil Production Rates and Ultimate Recovery from All Horizontal Wells in the Bakken Shale

Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale

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