Abstract
Hydraulic fracturing technologies play a major role in the global energy supply and affect oil pricing. The current oil price fluctuations within 40 to 55 USD per barrel have caused diminished economical margins for hydraulic fracturing projects. Hence, successful decision making the for execution of hydraulic fracturing projects requires a higher level of integration of technical, commercial, and uncertainty analyses. However, the complexity of hydraulic fracturing modeling, and the sensitivity and the effects of uncertainty of reservoir heterogeneity on well performance renders the integration of such studies rather impractical. The impact of reservoir heterogeneity on hydraulic fracturing performance has been quantified by the introduction of Heterogeneity Impact Factor (HIF) and formulas have been developed to forecast well performance using HIF. These advances provide a platform for introducing a practical approach for introducing the Risk of Commercial Failure (RCF) due to reservoir heterogeneity in hydraulic fracturing projects. This paper defines such a parameter and the methodology to calculate it in a time-efficient manner. The proposed approach has been exercised on a real project in which a RCF of 20% is computed. The analysis also covers the sensitivity on Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), Operational Expenditure (OPEX), gas price, HIF and discount rate.
Highlights
The high energy prices from 2007 to 2014 led to the exploitation of more hydrocarbons from oil and gas reservoirs around the globe
We propose a definition of commercial failure due to reservoir heterogeneity as the probability of having Net Present Value (NPV) = 0 considering the uncertainty of Heterogeneity Impact Factor (HIF)
To model the Risk of Commercial Failure (RCF) associated with a hydraulic fracturing project considering the heterogeneity Energies 2018, 11, 218 of the gas reservoir, the workflow presented in Figure 4 was followed
Summary
The high energy prices from 2007 to 2014 led to the exploitation of more hydrocarbons from oil and gas reservoirs around the globe. They claim that this is a unique and powerful workflow that covers different aspects from geological and simulation parameters and forecast scenarios to economic evaluation [25]. In this paper, following our previously-suggested formulas [30] for production forecasting of multi-fractured horizontal wells in heterogeneous tight gas reservoir (the main focus of this study), a highly time-efficient workflow is proposed from which the Risk of Commercial Failure (RCF) due to the impact of reservoir heterogeneity can be evaluated. Our suggested gas flow model (decline curve using heterogeneity impact factor, DCH) was incorporated in an economic evaluation platform from which NPV of a hydraulic fracturing job could be calculated for a range of realizations.
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