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Unconventional E&P The focus in unconventional exploration and production is shifting to maximizing production. “The next big play is getting more out of what you have,” said Jay Ottoson, president and chief operating officer for SM Energy, at the recent Unconventional Resources Technology Conference in Denver. The math is simple. Adding one percentage point to recoveries from the top unconventional formations for oil and gas in the United States will add billions of billions of barrels of oil production and tens of trillions of cubic feet of gas, he said. There is plenty of room for improvement. The examples offered by Ottoson would increase the ultimate recovery rate in the biggest US oil plays from 5% to 6%. Comments by others during the conference, a joint project of SPE, AAPG, and SEG, indicated that range is not uncommon as companies look for ways to do better. Even at those levels, the growing flow of oil and gas from these extensive formations has pushed the US up toward the top of the list of the world’s producers. Scott Key, chief executive officer of IHS, said that in a few years, the United States will again emerge as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. The production increase has been enough to boost the growth rate of the US economy, turning it into the low-cost producer in refining and chemical making and soon an exporter of liquefied natural gas, Key said. Rick Bott Jr., president and chief operating officer of Continental Re - sources, described the company’s approach as “we have a simple sort of strategy, we drill a lot of horizontal wells.” Anadarko is drilling about one well a day in the Wattenburg field in Colorado, said Brad Holly, vice president for the Rockies at Anadarko Petroleum. While the pace is steady, methods are constantly changing. Improvement is in the details. To begin with, the particulars include more precise drilling of clusters of wells that are spaced and fractured based on a growing understanding of how best to efficiently drain a formation. Continental, which was a pioneer in the Bakken in North Dakota, and SM reported pilot projects on what Bott called “down spacing,” that is, seeking gains by drilling wells on a single pad site to varying depths. “The technology is changing monthly,” he said. Coming are projects to enhance the output of older wells, such as installing downhole pumps and refracturing older wells. “We have not really started working on production enhancements,” Bott said. Anadarko is drilling horizontal wells to revive a formation where new wells must be carefully drilled around many old ones. “We are operating among 17,000 vertical wells. We need to minimize interference with existing wells that are as little as 15 ft away,” Holly said. Products displayed at the conference helped define the challenges of this sort of development. They promised information that could be used to make better development decisions, deliver it fast enough to keep up with rapid field work, and at a price that is in line with price-conscious mass production operations. Unconventional exploration and production is a bit like farming, said Don Westacott, chief adviser for global unconventional reservoirs at Halliburton, who grew up on a farm in western Canada. Both can be profitable enterprises, but they require expensive inputs, the cooperation of nature, skill, and persistence. And both farmers and oil companies can be so productive that they glut the market, driving down prices. Schlumberger offered a reminder of the challenges of this business during a display at its booth. At the bottom of the screen during a video on its TelePacer drilling platform, which is designed to help drillers drill wells according to plan, was a constant reminder that 40% of wells are subeconomic and 35% of all fracture stages do not contribute.
- North America > United States > Texas (0.69)
- North America > United States > North Dakota (0.50)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (1.00)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Upstream (1.00)
- North America > United States > Texas > Permian Basin > Wolfcamp Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > South Dakota > Williston Basin > Bakken Shale Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > North Dakota > Williston Basin > Bakken Shale Formation (0.99)
- (11 more...)
When EOG Resources disclosed that it had found a way to get from 30 to 70% more oil from Eagle Ford shale wells, it set off a race among competitors looking for a low-cost way to add reserves by injecting natural gas. It has been little noticed because few companies have said anything publicly about it. But university researchers and service companies are seeing widespread interest from companies that are trying to figure out how EOG uses gas injection to increase production and whether those gains can be sustained long enough to add reserves. Research interest in gas injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR) persuaded David Schechter, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University, to equip his lab that has been used to test carbon dioxide (CO2) for EOR to safely observe how natural gas affects reservoir rock. "Basically everyone with a substantial acreage position is working on unconventional oil EOR now," said Schechter. "This is the name of the game. Everybody is talking about EOR and pumping money into trials of EOR," said Deepak Devegowda, an associate engineering professor at the University of Oklahoma.
Abstract Over the last decade, there has been tremendous success is developing and producing unconventional oil resources such as the Bakken and Eagle Ford; however, flaring produced gases from these fields has become a problem that needs to be addressed. In many instances, pipeline infrastructure is not in place to transport gas away from the wells. One possible solution is to reinject the produced gas back into the formation, which has numerous positive benefits. It has the potential to increase oil recovery from unconventional reservoirs because of the strong likelihood to achieve miscibility with reservoir oil. Furthermore, unlike flaring, the injected gas will be available for sales once gas gathering pipelines become available. Gas reinjection also should mitigate environmental concerns associated with greenhouse gas emissions. We evaluated the recovery potential along with the costs of reinjecting gas to determine the economic value of this process. A dual-porosity, compositional flow simulator was used to model the gas injection process into a well surrounded by producers and to determine the amount of incremental oil and gas produced. We calculated the net economic value of the process by including the cost of gas compression and fuel gas for injection. We have concluded that oil production rates can be significantly increased, and the economics of the process is very positive. Additionally, significant volumes of gas can be recycled, which alleviates environmental concerns of gas flaring and improves resource efficiency. As a result, we recommend pilot testing the gas injection process to assess the commercial application of the proposal.
- North America > United States > North Dakota (1.00)
- North America > United States > Montana (0.70)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Upstream (1.00)
- Government > Regional Government > North America Government > United States Government (0.68)
- North America > United States > North Dakota > Sanish Field > Bakken Shale Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > Montana > Williston Basin > Elm Coulee Field > Bakken Shale Formation > Middle Bakken Shale Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > South Dakota > Williston Basin > Bakken Shale Formation (0.92)
- (5 more...)
Low oil prices may not be the biggest threat to the long-term sustainability of the North American shale business. Some are more concerned about the low recovery rates of horizontal shale wells, estimated to be about 7% on average— far short of the 40% achieved through primary and secondary (waterflooding) production in conventional reservoirs. Refracturing has been touted as the next big thing to improve ultimate recovery, but such operations remain relatively expensive and may only temporarily reset production to initial rates once or twice in a well’s life. To see long-term results and a doubling or tripling of current recovery rates, a number of experts say enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies must be developed to work in tight shale reservoirs. And due to persistently low natural gas prices, current efforts appear to be exclusively focused on oil and condensate producing wells. It is early days for this area of EOR research. There is no consensus on which approaches will work best, how much they may cost, what the most pressing challenges are, or exactly when an EOR operation should begin. “Our understanding is really small,” said Todd Hoffman, an assistant professor of petroleum engineering at Montana Tech University. “We’re coming from the conventional world where ‘this’ is how we did EOR and we may just have to throw all that out.” Hoffman is one of several researchers trying to figure out how EOR methodologies can be adapted or reinvented for the oil-rich shale fields of North Dakota, Texas, and Canada. One of the most popular ideas being studied is a huff-and-puff approach that uses a single horizontal well to alternate between producing oil and injecting natural gas or CO2 to re-pressurize the reservoir and displace oil. Another idea is to apply continuous injections into one well and use an offset well as the producer. Others are looking into flooding the wells with surfactants and possibly acid to stimulate production. In May, EOG Resources laid claim to the first economic demonstration of an injection-based EOR technology for tight oil in the US. The company said the development may have long-term production benefits and is competitive with drilling new wells. But other than making it clear that the process has been successful and uses dry gas produced in the same field, EOG is withholding key operational details such as whether it involves the huff-and-puff technique or continuous injections. A number of other innovative shale producers including Statoil, Nexen Energy, Continental Resources, and Marathon Oil have also either funded research or are known to be running pilots, but have not made their results public. As most shale producers remain silent about their EOR efforts, there are a growing number of technical papers being published by university petroleum departments and reservoir engineering consultants. They are using computer models and corefloods to test their theories and have produced promising numbers that suggest there may be several practical ways to implement EOR strategies for shale.
- North America > United States > North Dakota (0.70)
- North America > United States > Montana (0.50)
- North America > United States > Texas (0.50)
- North America > United States > Wyoming > Laramie Basin > Niobrara Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > Nebraska > Laramie Basin > Niobrara Formation (0.99)
- North America > United States > Kansas > Laramie Basin > Niobrara Formation (0.99)
- (31 more...)
- Reservoir Description and Dynamics > Unconventional and Complex Reservoirs > Shale oil (1.00)
- Reservoir Description and Dynamics > Unconventional and Complex Reservoirs > Shale gas (1.00)
- Reservoir Description and Dynamics > Improved and Enhanced Recovery (1.00)
- Management > Energy Economics > Unconventional resource economics (1.00)
When EOG Resources disclosed that it had found a way to get from 30 to 70% more oil from Eagle Ford shale wells, it set off a race among competitors looking for a low-cost way to add reserves by injecting natural gas. It has been little noticed because few companies have said anything publicly about it. But university researchers and service companies are seeing widespread interest from companies that are trying to figure out how EOG uses gas injection to increase production and whether those gains can be sustained long enough to add reserves. Research interest in gas injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR) persuaded David Schechter, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University, to equip his lab that has been used to test carbon dioxide (CO2) for EOR to safely observe how natural gas affects reservoir rock. “Basically everyone with a substantial acreage position is working on unconventional oil EOR now,” said Schechter. “This is the name of the game. Everybody is talking about EOR and pumping money into trials of EOR,” said Deepak Devegowda, an associate engineering professor at the University of Oklahoma. The question facing EOG and its competitors is, can they take a method that improves results from some of its best wells, and use it on a far larger scale to increase overall recoveries in unconventional formations where more than 90% of the resource is left behind. Companies would like to understand and simulate it and, most importantly, they are looking for clues on how EOG did it. “A whole bunch of folks are watching what other people are doing,” Devegowda said. Companies and researchers are using statistical analysis to determine patterns in production data filed with the Texas Railroad Commission to try to figure out how EOG is using natural gas injection. Among those looking is Todd Hoffman, an associate professor from Montana State, who was initially skeptical of EOG’s claims. After studying the data, Hoffman said that EOG clearly is “seeing huge increases in added oil production.” He is now working on a paper based on the disclosures. As for how he figured out which of EOG’s more than 7,000 Eagle Ford wells to study, he said, “I really had to dig around to find it. I talked to a number of companies planning pilots, doing pilots, in the planning stage, trying to do the same thing,” he said.
- North America > United States > Texas (1.00)
- North America > United States > Montana (0.67)