Surface Drilling Data for Constrained Hydraulic Fracturing and Fast Reservoir Simulation of Unconventional Wells

Abstract

The objective is to present a new integrated workflow which leverages commonly available drilling data from multiple wells to build reservoir models to be used for designing and optimizing hydraulic fracture treatment and reservoir simulation. The use of surface drilling data provides valuable information along every wellbore. This information includes estimations of geomechanical logs, pore pressure, stresses, porosity and natural fractures. These rock properties may be used as a first approximation in a well-centric approach to geoengineer completions. Combining these logs from multiple wells into 3D reservoir models provides more value including using them in reservoir geomechanics, 3D planar hydraulic fracturing design and reservoir simulation. When using these 3D models and their results in a fast marching method simulator, the impact of the interference between wells can be estimated quickly while providing results like those derived with a classical reservoir simulator. Integrating surface drilling data with 3D reservoir models, hydraulic fracturing design and reservoir simulation into a single software platform results in a fast and constrained approach which allows for a more efficient management of unconventional wells.

Developing Unconventional Reservoirs Using Limited Natural Fractures Statistics – Challenges and Opportunities

“…The answer can be found in the use of surface drilling data which could be used to estimate a natural fracture index, pore pressure, stresses and geomechanical logs at any past, present and future wells. The science behind this approach is described in Ouenes et al (2019) and provides the necessary means to quantify the role of natural fractures in any circumstance.…”