SPE General Meeting

Topic:      Evaluation of Long-Term Performance of Well Data in Elm Coulee Field

Speaker:    Stuart Cox, Marathon Oil Corporation

Date:        Wednesday - January 18, 2012

Time:        11:30 am

 Place: Denver Athletic Club

 Cost: $25.00 ($30.00 at the door, if space is available)
Reservation Deadline: Noon, Monday January 16, 2012.  Deadline for reservations has been changed to Noon on the Monday before the General Meetings. or Call 303-620-9080 for reservations.

Abstract:

Unconventional oil reservoirs, such as Bakken, have gained considerable interest in recent years. Performance prediction from these tight reservoirs is a challenge because of the complexity of reservoir flow, well completion, and fracture stimulation techniques. The Elm Coulee Field located in Richland County, Montana is an unconventional development producing from the Bakken reservoir.  The field was drilled using both vertical and horizontal wells, however in recent years the use of horizontal wells has been prevalent. The objective of this talk is to review and evaluate the long-term (7 to 10 years) performance of horizontal wells in Elm Coulee Field to develop a better understanding how to predict the performance of younger Bakken fields in North Dakota.

Various forms of the Arps decline curve technique are currently used to estimate reserves from unconventional oil and gas reservoirs. This talk will apply these techniques to match the early performance of the Elm Coulee Field and predict future performance of the field.  These results will demonstrate that using constant b values overestimate performance of the wells with long transient flow periods in Bakken. In fact, to match the long-term performance of Elm Coulee wells, the numerical value of b had to be decreased periodically.

Finally, results from analytical and numerical approaches will be presented to decipher the flow regimes, and to determine the varying decline parameters.  We have found that numerical modeling provides a comprehensive prediction of future well performance. The talk will demonstrate how numerical modeling can be used to guide predictions and account variability in reservoir completion properties in low-permeability reservoirs.

Biography:

Stuart Cox is Marathon Oil Corporation's Chief Reservoir Engineer for unconventional resource developments.  He has 27 years of industry experience focused on operations and reservoir engineering. Since 1994 Stuart’s primary focus has been evaluation and production optimization of tight gas and unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.  Stuart is a Society of Petroleum Engineers Distinguished Lecturer 2009-2010.  He is an in house instructor for pressure transient and production analysis.  He graduated from the University of Tulsa with a B.S. degree in Petroleum Engineering in 1984 and is a registered professional engineer in Alaska and Oklahoma. Stuart has authored sixteen papers published by SPE.