Right-Sized Completions: Data and Physics-Based Design for Stacked Pay Horizontal Well Development

Abstract

In some basins, large scale development of unconventional stacked-target plays requires early election of well targeting and spacing. Changes to the initial well construction framework can take years to implement due to lead times for land, permitting, and corporate planning. Over time, as operators wish to fine tune their development plans, completion design flexibility represents a powerful force for optimization. Hydraulic fracturing treatment plans may be adjusted and customized close to the time of investment. With a practical approach that takes advantage of physics-based modeling and data analysis, we demonstrate how to create a high-confidence, integrated well spacing and completion design strategy for both frontier and mature field development. The Dynamic Stimulated Reservoir Volume (DSRV) workflow forms the backbone of the physics-based approach, constraining simulations against treatment, flow-back, production, and pressure-buildup (PBU) data. Depending on the amount of input data available and mechanisms investigated, one can invoke various levels of rigor in coupling geomechanics and fluid flow – ranging from proxies to full iterative coupling. To answer spacing and completions questions in the Denver Basin, also known as the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin, we extend this modeling workflow to multi-well, multi-target, and multi-variate space. With proper calibration, we are able generate production performance predictions across the field for a range of subsurface, well spacing, and completion scenarios. Results allow us to co-optimize well spacing and completion size for this multi-layer column. Insights about the impacts of geology and reservoir conditions highlight the potential for design customization across the play. Results are further validated against actual data using an elegant multi-well surveillance technique that better illuminates design space. Several elements of subsurface characterization potentially impact the interactions among design variables. In particular, reservoir fluid property variations create important effects during injection and production. Also, both data analysis and modeling support a key relationship involving well spacing and the efficient creation of stimulated reservoir volumes. This relationship provides a lever that can be utilized to improve value based on corporate needs and commodity price. We introduce these observations to be further tested in the field and models.