Data Mining and Analysis - Eagle Ford Formation, South Texas

摘要

The paper applies commonly available public information to outline well behavior for productive trend modeling within a chosen area of the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas. Public records are often thought to contain qualitatively insufficient information to provide a reasonable analysis of well and producing character trend characteristics. They -Public records- contain both static and dynamic well data. Static information consists of completion histories, locations, deviations surveys, core analyses, and well property maps while oil, gas and water production records comprise dynamic records. Too often, this freely available information is not utilized for regional studies because pressure, porosity, permeability profiles are not included in these files. More descriptive data are usually only available in individual company well files. This means for most cases, rate - time data represent the only information available to the public. The study of monthly production records involving multiple ownership properties can highlight regions of no additional interest but also can highlight areas of potential additional economic value. Property value could be increased by well cleanouts, workovers, and re-fracturing or new drill locations to increase recovery from these high productivity areas. In any case, a seemingly intractable data problem could be reduced to a rather straightforward procedure by the study of well records. Cumulative production, remaining reserves or initial production rate estimates plotted on available property maps could highlight areas for further review or in the majority of cases exhausted areas of no additional interest. Transforming production data is only the first step of the process, a comprehensive interpretation of the results must follow. Property and maps obtained from public records provide a basis for plotting production trends for a particular well set. Analysis of well tickets coupled with the oil, gas and water production history supply considerable insight into interpreting a well history since erratic production changes are numerous in the Eagle Ford trend. Recovery estimates can only be determined after the data are plotted and studied to select the proper production segment to analyze. Selection of transient and boundary dominated segments is of paramount importance for interpreting Eagle Ford wells. Smoothing techniques such as material balance time and normalized production can be applied if necessary. The "goodness" of the fracture system can be estimated from the transient portion of the curve while estimated reserves from the boundary side. Of course, the process will not apply if discrete systems cannot be identified. These results are plotted on a property maps and interpreted. A particular area within the south Texas area is identified and each well subjected to the data mining process. The result of this study should help identify maturely developed areas and highlights areas of interest.