Top-Down , Intelligent Reservoir Modeling of Oil and Gas Producing Shale Reservoirs ; Case Studies

Producing hydrocarbon (both oil and gas) from Shale plays has attracted much attention in recent years. Advances in horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing have made shale reservoirs a focal point for many operators. Our understanding of the complexity associated with the flow mechanism in the natural fracture and its coupling with the matrix and the induced fracture, impact of geomechanical parameters and optimum design of hydraulic fractures has not necessarily kept up with our interest in these prolific and hydrocarbon rich formations. In this paper we discuss the application of a new reservoir modeling approach to history matching, forecasting and analyzing oil and gas production from shale reservoirs. In this new approach instead of imposing our understanding of the flow mechanism and the production process on the reservoir model, we allow the production history, well log, and hydraulic fracturing data to force their will on our model and determine its behavior. In other words, by carefully listening to the data from individual wells and the reservoir as a whole, we developed a data-driven model and history match the production process and validate our model (using blind production history) from shale reservoirs. The validated, history matched model is used to forecast future production from the field and to assist in planning field development strategies. In the validation context, the “blind production history” is referred to the last several months of production history that is not used during the training and history matching process and has been used to validate the forecast of the Top-Down Model (TDM). This is a unique and innovative use of pattern recognition capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining (AI&DM) as a workflow to build a full field reservoir simulation model for forecasting and analysis of oil and gas production from shale formations. Examples of three case studies in Lower Huron and New Albany shale formations (gas producing) and Bakken shale (oil producing) is presented in this article.

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