Unlocking shale’s economic potential with upfront planning, collaboration

In our business, a mature production resource is predictable, repeatable, and profitable, which is achieved by developing mastery in exploration, development, and production with a sharp eye on ways to decrease our cost and impact on the environment.

Consider the specific constraints under which shale players continue to operate. First, they must minimize their impact on the environment through impeccable well integrity, cleaner fracturing fluids, sustainable water treatment, and a strategy to win the long-term support of the public and governments across the globe. In addition, their financials require close attention. The pace and scale of operations can make for very expensive mistakes. Finally they must change the way they work and develop multidisciplinary teams that combine expertise in geosciences, drilling, and completion – in a much tighter way than ever before. And while we have learned a great deal during the last 10 to 15 years of shale operations, fundamental questions remain largely unanswered to date:

• Sweet Spots. How can they be located?
• Target zone. What is the optimal depth and geological setting to land a well?
• Reservoir. What is the best between reservoir quality and brittleness for optimal production?
• Efficient frac. How important is it to engineer the optimal number and placement of frac stages as opposed to geometric placement?
• Production data. How do we measure the performance of previous operations?
• Asset value. What reservoir attributes are required to accurately estimate recoverable reserves?
• Refracing. To refrac or to not refrac? How do we know when to plan a refrac, and how do we quantify the economic outcome?

These questions are not new, yet there is little doubt that knowing the answers would provide a huge positive economic impact. Until now the industry has progressed in the shale domain mostly through a trial and error, statistical process. While pragmatic, this approach is not only costly but insufficient to tackle the issues above.

Productivity is a function of geoscience and completions. A multidisciplinary approach by integrating unique technologies and data helps to find sweet spots and optimize resource exploitation. (Image courtesy of Weatherford International Ltd.)

Applying a scientific approach to an industrial process as massive as global shale exploitation is a non-trivial exercise. Fundamentally, this will require a deeper understanding of subsurface physical mechanisms in shale reservoirs, mostly rock mechanics and hydrocarbon fluid behavior during fracturing and production phases. Applying this approach also will require fit-for-purpose measurements combining cost efficiency and relevance to shale reservoirs to systematically observe, measure, and characterize rocks and fluid behavior. A true multidisciplinary approach that allows problems to be viewed in their entirety will need to be part of the equation. The completion engineer, the geologist, the geophysicist, and the drilling engineer must work together if we are to truly progress.

This requires a step change in the way players in the industry – operators, service companies, consultants, and academic institutions – collaborate to yield a series of best practices and new workflows that can transform the way operators exploit shale.

Only through this type of approach will the industry be able to narrow the gap between “pump and pray” and systematic production. This will ensure that lingering technical challenges are solved and shale resources are developed to the fullest potential, economically.