Currently, numerous oil and gas companies are extending and even beginning their efforts toward the exploration and exploitation of tight gas sand reservoirs outside of the United States and Canada. These reservoirs have proved to be challenging in terms of reservoir characterization and optimizing fracture stimulation techniques. Many companies do not have key rock property data that are crucial for understanding these reservoirs and for designing optimal fracture stimulations. Many treatment options are available and operators are often left with very expensive “trial and error” field testing of various fracture stimulation techniques. No hydraulic fracture design can be optimized, or in many cases, successfully performed or pumped in the field without the rock property data. Therefore, in order to properly evaluate and exploit tight gas sands, appropriate types of rock property data need to be measured and integrated with log data, stimulation techniques, and production test information. These integrated data sets and case histories will provide operators with the critical parameters to optimize their exploitation of these reservoirs and reduce finding and development costs.
The Integrated Reservoir Solutions Division of Core Laboratories is proposing to interested companies participation in an ongoing multi-company, geo-engineering study of Tight Gas Sands that is being extended to areas outside of North America. For the past four years, our Fracture Stimulation Optimization technical teams have been analyzing and evaluating Tight Gas Sands in North America and have developed a very large and comprehensive database. This database consists of the characterization and evaluation of numerous conventional cores taken from multiple, tight gas sand formations and integrates these data with the stimulation design and production characteristics into a case history. This project will provide international operators with valuable information not only on their own contributed wells, but also on other operator’s wells in other Tight Gas Sand formations. The data and understanding of the North American Tight Gas Sand reservoirs will provide international operators the most current reservoir characterization, completion designs, and production performance data that can serve as analogs and benchmarks for international Tight Gas Sand reservoirs.
Each company joining the project will be required to contribute conventional cores from three (3) wells for analysis, evaluation and inclusion into the database. The conventional core must be through a Tight Gas Sand reservoir. Conventional cores from existing wells may be contributed, as well as cores from future exploration and/or development wells. It is anticipated that conventional cores from a minimum of thirty (30) international wells will be added to the approximately one hundred (100) North American case history wells in the project, making the largest and most comprehensive Tight Gas Sand database in the world.
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