15 May, 2020

How to Use Geology to Save Money, Drill Better Wells, and Improve Well Performance

American Association of Petroleum Geologists

 

In times of distressed operatorship, the geologic discipline often gets placed on the back burner. This course is designed for the geologist to use data at hand to directly impact the bottom line at your company using the humblest and commonest of data sets.

Course will be held via Zoom: 3–6 August 2020, 7:00 pm–9:00 pm (CDT)

In times of distressed operatorship, the geologic discipline often gets placed on the back burner. This course is designed for the geologist to use data at hand to directly impact the bottom line at your company using the humblest and commonest of data sets.

Using cuttings, we will observe how we can save the company from expensive lateral logging costs and use them for reservoir characterization and completion insights. We will observe case studies where improved targeting using cuttings has led to better well performance and helped completions design better stages.

Proprietary core data is often expensive and sparse. We will discuss harnessing the power of public core datasets and consortia data and review the most common data sets to integrate with your program and bring relevance to the bottom line.

Then there Is the entire field of Geochemistry which can yield so much insight to your play or basin, but these learnings are often shrouded in massive amounts of data and the need for a specialized geochemist to translate them. Often geochemistry data become esoteric and provide few learnings that are relevant to producing wells today. We will review the most common Geochemistry data and look at simple methods of synthesizing these into your program. We will also visit the emerging geochemistry of allocating well production using geochemical fingerprinting.

Finally, spacing considerations are often left the reservoir engineers. Understanding your geologic target perhaps yield greater insights to spacing than engineering math. We will review methodology of imaging your laterals in 3-D and in a “wine rack” as drilled, integrating with engineering and completions and other data to identify problems or insights on optimal spacing.

Why This Course Stands Out

This course utilizes old school techniques with existing data sets to shed new light on your reservoir targets and completions practices. Cutting, core, and geochemistry are discussed as well as cutting edge new technologies allowing the geologist to create meaningful interpretations from existing data to improve well performance and save money!

Topics
  • Using Cuttings from laterals for targeting, reservoir character, and completions insights
  • Using XRD, XRF, Mass Spec as proxies for expensive horizontal logging.
  • Identifying the best target for drilling, and how to integrate geology with completions
  • Making existing Core and Geochemistry data from public, proprietary, and consortia sources work for you to bring value to the bottom line.
  • Spacing and Stacking- How do your laterals stack up?
  • Allocating production- What rock is your well producing from?
Course Outline
Day 1
  • Introductions and Overview
  • Going Old School with Cuttings: How and when to use them in Reservoir Characterization
  • Collections methodologies: Standard, Enhanced
  • Real time vs. Post-well analysis
  • Mineralogical Brittleness as a proxy for Elastic Moduli in lieu of expensive lateral logging
  • Integrating with Completions Data
  • Identifying Best Targets within lateral
  • Creating a Maturity Gradient (Ro)
  • Case Study: DJ Basin Niobrara and Codell, Montney FM Alberta
  • Mudlogging and sampling for special projects
    • Geochemistry: Isotubes, Isojars, and Wet cuts
Day 2
  • Using Core Data to identify best target, best source, and quantify OIP
  • Free Data: State & Fed
  • Consortia Data:
  • In house data
  • Common data types: RCA, GRI, SRA, Thin sections, core descriptions, SEM and more
  • Integration with log data
  • Using core data to bring relevance to the bottom line
Day 3
  • When and how to use Geochemistry
  • Geochemistry techniques from Old School to Cutting Edge Innovative Technologies
    • Rock Eval, SRA, Pyrolysis, Hydrous Pyrolysis, Visual Ro
    • Methods of allocating produced Oils
    • When and how to involve a geochemist
    • Leveraging Spotfire dashboards to do your own Interpretations
  • Case Studies: Uinta Basin, DJ Basin, Bakken, Greater Permian Basin
Day 4
  • Spacing and Stacking- How do your laterals stack up?
  • Imaging your laterals in 3d and in Gun Barrels
  • Integration with Completion and RE Data
  • Identifying possible areas of Destructive vs Constructive communication
  • Utilizing allocation data
  • Case Studies: Greater Permian Basin, DJ Basin