Overview: Well Stimulation (July 2005)

Abstract

Well, it never fails. All good planning aside, here I am preparing this stimulation overview on an airplane the day before it is due. I am reminded of being back in school, but only briefly because the issues that seem to be facing myself and many others in our industry today are more and more demanding and time-consuming than they were back in school. As a result, items such as this tend to slip right to the point where they suddenly become a major priority just when they need to be completed. Reviewing the papers for this year’s selections, however, was no small task. There were many, many very good quality papers written on a very wide range of stimulation-related topics from locations around the world. This year, being limited to four primary selections meant that four very good papers had to be listed as additional reading, and I strongly recommend that you consider reading these papers. I was struck this year by the amount of diversity that exists in the subject we call “stimulation” in our industry. In the rather large group of papers that were evaluated for this section, the wide range of subject matter clearly demonstrated how different geographic regions often require different well architecture and different stimulation solutions. It appears that the industry has matured tremendously over the years and that we clearly have developed specific areas of expertise to address specific requirements. With this specialization happening in our industry, it is becoming more important for us to communicate effectively to learn from one another’s experience. I think that it is quite difficult to maintain expertise over a subject as broad as stimulation, but it is important for us to keep well informed because of continuous technical developments on several fronts. In the selections this year, I tried to pick papers from different locations where our industry is active to demonstrate the types of difficult problems being addressed and the creative solutions being used. I hope that you will find this section to be enjoyable and beneficial in helping you develop your own solutions for your own well conditions. Available from the SPE eLibrary: www.spe.org SPE 90815 - “Injection-Well Stimulation: Putting Away More for Less in California Waterfloods,” by Don McClatchie, SPE, BJ Services Co., et al. SPE 90428 - “Fine-Scale Simulation of Sandstone Acidizing,” by C. Li, U. Texas at Austin, et al. SPE 90158 - “The Keys to Successfully Acidizing Horizontal Injection Wells in the Marlim Sul Field,” by Mário Germino Ferreira Da Silva, Petrobras, et al. SPE 90792 - “Integrated Process Improves Production of the Almond Formation in the Wamsutter Field, Wyoming: A Low-Permeability Case Study of 5 Years of Continuous Improvement in Well Performance,” by Mike Mullen, Halliburton, et al.