On the Application of Probabilistic Decline Curve Analysis to Unconventional Reservoirs

Several authors have worked on combining decline curve analysis (DCA) models and stochastic algorithms for probabilistic DCAs. However, there are no publications on the application of these probabilistic decline curve models to all the major shale basins in the United States. Also, several empirical and analytical decline curve models have been developed to fit historical production data better; there is no systematic investigation of the relevance of the efforts on new model development compared with the efforts to quantify the uncertainty associated with the “noise” in the historical data. This work compares the uncertainty associated with determining the best-fit model (epistemic uncertainty) with the uncertainty associated with the historical data (aleatoric uncertainty) and presents a procedure to find DCA-stochastic algorithm combinations that encompass the epistemic uncertainty. We investigated two Bayesian methods—the approximate Bayesian computation and the Gibbs sampler—and two frequentist methods—the conventional bootstrap (BS) and modified BS (MBS). These stochastic algorithms were combined with five empirical DCA models (Arps, Duong, power law, logistic growth, and stretched exponential decline) and the analytical Jacobi theta-2 model. We analyzed historical production data from 1,800 wells (300 wells from each of the six major shale basins studied) with historical data lengths ranging from 12 to 60 months. We show the errors associated with the assumption of a uniform distribution for the model parameters and present an approach for integrating informative prior (IP) probabilistic distributions instead of the noninformative prior (NIP) or uniform prior distributions. Our results indicate the superior performance of the Bayesian methods, especially at short hindcasts (12–24 months of production history). We observed that the duration of the historical production data was the most critical factor. Using long hindcasts (up to 60 months) leveled the performance of all probabilistic methods regardless of the decline curve model or statistical methodology used. Additionally, we showed that it is possible to find DCA-stochastic model combinations that reflect the epistemic uncertainty in most of the shale basins investigated. The novelty of this work lies in the development of IPs for the Bayesian methodologies and the development of a systematic approach to determine the combination of statistical methods and DCA models that encompasses the epistemic uncertainty. The proposed approach was implemented using open-source software packages to make our results reproducible and to facilitate its practical application in forecasting production in unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.