Southern North Sea Tight-Gas Field Development Planning Using Hydraulic Fracturing

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the subsurface economic and technical issues involved in developing a Southern North Sea (SNS) tight-gas field using hydraulic fracturing. The paper investigates different kinds of wells (vertical vs. horizontal) and different completions; fracture spacing, fracture orientations (longitudinal vs. transverse).The investigation was performed using a range of different reservoir qualities with appropriate completion and stimulation designs. Production and Net Present Value (NPV) estimates were developed for the different scenarios for qualitative and quantitative evaluation. The result is a generic strategy to evaluate a Field Development Plan (FDP) using hydraulically fractured horizontal wells.The paper concludes with general guidelines on what type of recoveries are possible using different completion and stimulation solutions in situations with different kh distributions. The guidelines will help in initial screening of prospects to determine whether the tight gas reservoirs have significant potential for economic development. The latter is also a function of the actual development costs of pipelines and platforms, which is different for different companies and different locations. This paper also demonstrates why stimulation considerations should be put on the agenda early on in the construction of an FDP.

Evaluation of heterogeneity impact on hydraulic fracturing performance

“…Since its introduction in the late 1940s, hydraulic fracturing has been widely used in North America to achieve higher recovery from low permeability reservoirs and/or to bypass the formation damage around the wellbore (Economides, et al, 2002). In addition, successful applications of this technique have been reported in other locations including North Sea (Vos, et al, 2009), South America (Antoci and Anaya, 2001), Asia (Shaoul, et al, 2007) and Middle East (Al-Zarouni and Ghedan, 2012) and (Mirzaei-Paiaman, 2013). Generally, many steps of analysis are performed prior to any hydraulic fracturing job to ensure its effectiveness.…”

Modeling the Risk of Commercial Failure for Hydraulic Fracturing Projects Due to Reservoir Heterogeneity

“…In this sense, improving gas recovery from unconventional gas resources such as shale gas [1][2][3][4] and tight gas [5][6][7] reservoirs using the hydraulic fracturing technology has proved to be effective in supplying a part of the increasing global energy demand. Some examples of hydraulic fracturing applications have been reported all around the world [8][9][10][11][12]. Although the fracturing technique is now considered an essential part of the reservoir management backbone in tight/shale gas field developments, the complexities associated with the hydraulic fracturing dictate some degree of uncertainty in successful economic applications [6,[13][14][15][16].…”

A Practical Workflow for Offshore Hydraulic Fracturing Modelling: Focusing on Southern North Sea

“…In recent years, the hydraulic fracturing techniques have been further improved (Langford, et al, 2014), (Shaoul, et al, 2013), (Schrama, et al, 2011), (Vos, et al, 2009) and new technology has been introduced such as new proppant technology, seawater frac fluid and horizontal multifrac completion (Langford, et al, 2013).…”