This is the third post in our series: “Improving your forward vision” (please see the first and second posts). We have created SMART4D to allow you to dynamically and confidently geosteer toward the target. In this post we highlight the benefits of geosteering with SMART4D and using the 3D model approach.
The benefits of geosteering include:
- Reducing doglegs
- Reducing completion issues
- Staying in the target landing zone
- Increasing formation accuracy
Reducing Doglegs and Completion Issues
United has completed numerous Post-Drill Studies to understand the underlying issues resulting in poor placements. Some wells reactively geosteered are poorly placed with too much doglegs and tortuosity creating friction and kinks. Some of the post-drill studies showed high doglegs resulting in 30-50% of the lateral written off for completions while some wellbores were not fracable in the toe segment of Tight Plays due to high doglegs.
Considering that fracs are very costly and failures result in lower initial production and recoveries, they need to be optimized. Poor lateral placement away from drilling plans may also result when True North corrections due to magnetic variations are not implemented while drilling. The precision is not only due to Lease and survey accuracy considerations but to correct spacing in multi-zone or bench drilling such as in the Midland Basin within the Leonard, Spraberry, Dean and Wolfcamp packages. Any placement error laterally or vertically in the stack can influence the placement patterns for multiple zones. The processes and results of SMART4D show a reducing of issues and result improvements.
A Few Case Studies and KPI Improvements
WCSB Deep Basin plays in Alberta (Montney and other Tight Plays) COP/Cenovus drilled over 80 wells in a 2 year period with SMART4D The results included a significant 18% reduction in drilling days, 16% and 36% reduction in doglegs in the landings and laterals respectively, and 56% increase in formation accuracy. The Operations Team made use of gamma modelling in tandem with a porosity property model to optimize placement while drilling.
Black Swan Energy has drilled well over 50 wells, client has reported “higher recoveries by staying in the target landing zone”, “Consistently drilling entire laterals in 3m thick target zones”, “WITSML data retrieval allows for quicker response time” and “High confidence in the well path interpretation”.
Powder River Basin Sheridan Energy placed 40 injectors in 10 ft sand, reduced doglegs in the laterals by 16%. Client reported positive waterflood response.
Permian experience in Delaware Basin (Eddy, Loving, Pecos and Reeves counties) Midland Basin (Howard & Midland counties) and Central Basin Platform (Ector county), Various Permian Basin clients such as SM Energy, Energen, OXY (over 300 wells). Reduced rig-days from an average of 11 days to 7 days in a 150 well program, all great landings and laterals. Over 100 wells in the stacked Permian plays with lots of structure, successfully placed using SMART4D for SM Energy with great landings and optimized target placements.
Marcellus well placements for Stone Energy resulted in 100% well placements in 3500 ft and 5000 ft laterals in a 12 ft high gamma target. Doglegs and tortuosities were reduced in the lateral by 27% and 35% respectively. The client geologist explained that placement in the engineered high gamma sweet spot was important due to potential frac failures in the upper and lower high-clay material surrounding the sweet spot.