The Impact of Changing Operational Activities on Unconventional Resource Extraction

Abstract

In mid-2000, the North American energy renaissance began to take shape with a boom in unconventional oil and gas production. Within a decade, the combination of horizontal drilling, completion tools and hydraulic fracturing innovations unlocked a vast resource that was previously considered uneconomic. With a large focus of North American operations been around efficiency, a manufacturing model approach was deployed with significant capital efficiencies that further accelerated the learning curve. As these basins now mature and enter the infill development period, long term production results from these unconventional plays are starting to present valuable information in understanding the late time production performance and in-fill well performance (water cuts, production rates and changes due to interference). This paper presents results from the analysis of well performance by evaluating infill wells, in-fill lease-line wells and relating these interactions to the completion types and job types deployed. The order of the in-fill operations (East-West, Zipper, etc.) on performance is evaluated together with models to demonstrate the impact of fracturing operations and production operations on fracture asymmetry. Fracture models and production models, together with interference data, are utilized to enhance the understanding of the interactions and support hypothesis that demonstrate the importance of understanding operational timing.