Incremental and acceleration production estimation and their effect on optimization of well infill locations in tight gas reservoirs

• Published in: Journal of petroleum exploration and production technology Vol. 11; no. 6; pp. 2449 - 2480
• Main Authors: Dheyauldeen, Atheer, Al-Fatlawi, Omar, Hossain, Md Mofazzal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.06.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acceleration; Development projects; Drilling; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Economics; Energy Systems; Formations; Geology; Industrial and Production Engineering; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Methods; Monitoring/Environmental Analysis; Offshore Engineering; Oil wells; Optimization; Original Paper-Production Engineering; Planning; Potential resources; Qualitative analysis; Recovery; Redevelopment; Reserves; Sustainability; Time functions; Unsteady flow; Wells; Blasingame type curve; Incremental recovery; Tight gas; Acceleration recovery; Infill drilling
• ISSN: 2190-0558; 2190-0566
• DOI: 10.1007/s13202-021-01179-1

The main role of infill drilling is either adding incremental reserves to the already existing one by intersecting newly undrained (virgin) regions or accelerating the production from currently depleted areas. Accelerating reserves from increasing drainage in tight formations can be beneficial considering the time value of money and the cost of additional wells. However, the maximum benefit can be realized when infill wells produce mostly incremental recoveries (recoveries from virgin formations). Therefore, the prediction of incremental and accelerated recovery is crucial in field development planning as it helps in the optimization of infill wells with the assurance of long-term economic sustainability of the project. Several approaches are presented in literatures to determine incremental and acceleration recovery and areas for infill drilling. However, the majority of these methods require huge and expensive data; and very time-consuming simulation studies. In this study, two qualitative techniques are proposed for the estimation of incremental and accelerated recovery based upon readily available production data. In the first technique, acceleration and incremental recovery, and thus infill drilling, are predicted from the trend of the cumulative production (Gp) versus square root time function. This approach is more applicable for tight formations considering the long period of transient linear flow. The second technique is based on multi-well Blasingame type curves analysis. This technique appears to best be applied when the production of parent wells reaches the boundary dominated flow (BDF) region before the production start of the successive infill wells. These techniques are important in field development planning as the flow regimes in tight formations change gradually from transient flow (early times) to BDF (late times) as the production continues. Despite different approaches/methods, the field case studies demonstrate that the accurate framework for strategic well planning including prediction of optimum well location is very critical, especially for the realization of the commercial benefit (i.e., increasing and accelerating of reserve or assets) from infilled drilling campaign. Also, the proposed framework and findings of this study provide new insight into infilled drilling campaigns including the importance of better evaluation of infill drilling performance in tight formations, which eventually assist on informed decisions process regarding future development plans.