Abstract
The oil and gas industry continuously struggles to cope with the high cost of production in the context of competitive worldwide market prices. Low oil and gas prices backstop an economic situation where exploration and exploitation of complex reservoirs are hindered. Exploration and production of complex reservoirs face several challenges. Despite having subsurface information from geological models and seismic images, they are prone to uncertainties, and as a consequence, the development and production of such reservoirs are not optimal. Here, we focus on advanced sensing methodologies that are tailored to complex unconventional reservoirs, such as the heavy oil reservoirs in Canada. Further refinement of reservoir extent, hosted oil, and geological properties can potentially increase production rate, decrease the costs and risks of drilling, alleviate well placement issues, and improve the management and monitoring of reservoir — overall leading to lower uncertainty on developing the resource. We introduce new workflows for smart drilling and optimal well placement by taking advantage of the seismic-while-drilling imaging approach. The proposed framework provides high-resolution images of the subsurface thanks to new advancements in seismic remote sensing, signal processing, and imaging.
Highlights
According to the statistics reported by EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2017, world energy consumption is expected to increase by 15.3% over the twenty years (EIA, 2017)
If the challenges associated with characterizing the source radiation properties can be adequately addressed, the data arising from SWD are complementary to surface data and have the potential to enhance geophysical evaluation of the subsurface
The drillbit radiation patterns in the vertical direction are dominated by the pressure component, i.e., P waves, and in the horizontal direction is mainly shear component, i.e., S waves
Summary
According to the statistics reported by EIA’s International Energy Outlook 2017, world energy consumption is expected to increase by 15.3% over the twenty years (EIA, 2017). We describe a new workflow to optimize drilling, wellplacement, geosteering, and production of complex petroleum reservoirs, which reduces drilling costs by providing a better subsurface model. Uncertainties inherent in the geological model of the region of interest and subsurface seismic images, provided by processing surface seismic data, should be minimized to increase the performance of drilling, well-placement, geosteering, and production. Formation boundaries and main geological uncertainties are identified above, below, and in front of the drill bit This enhanced subsurface image reduces the uncertainties and provides valuable geological information for placing the well in complex reservoirs. It provides sufficient time for decision making and drilling optimization through mapping reservoir structures and problematic zones ahead of the drill bit. We provide a discussion section, in the end, covering final remarks and conclusions
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