So Many Wells, So Few Engineers: Scaling Production Engineering for all Those Shale Wells

Abstract

Shale plays present a daunting challenge for the small number of production experts charged with maximizing the output from this large population of fast-declining, quirky, and troublesome horizontal wells that are death to standard operating procedures. On the face of it the industry has the problem in hand. Artificial lift systems are being installed early in the life of wells with strong initial production rates, followed by rapid declines that are supposed to flatten out to manageable levels when they reach 5 years old or so. But there are no industrywide statistics to confirm if wells drilled recently are actually growing old at the single-digit rates that are widely assumed. Recently, though, Wood Mackenzie surveyed the decline rates of wells producing for more than 5 years in the Permian Basin and concluded the rate is around 14% a year. As the population of old wells rises, interest in eking out more oil and gas from them appears to be up. The organizers of the recent SPE Artificial Lift Conference and Exhibition-Americas expected to draw 500 people and wound up registering more than 700 to the Houston-area event. Much of the attention was on maximizing production from horizontal wells in ultratight rock by using better control systems and designs rather than focusing on improvements in the hardware. A key piece of those puzzles is developing ways of dealing with many wells where the performance varies erratically; monitoring, controls, and communication are often rudimentary; budgets are tight; and the physics of flow is still being figured out. “The industry is finding out a lot of the older ways of working and older technical developments will not work for the horizontal wells at the scale we now have them,” said Anand Nagoo, president of Nagoo & Associates. He made the comment during a talk where he presented case studies of how his analytical multiphase flow model was applied in the wells of clients in unconventional development, including Equinor (SPE 190921, SPE 191772). His critique was echoed in the description for an upcoming SPE Forum on Production in Horizontal Unconventionals: “While much investment has gone toward improving drilling and completions techniques, the industry still largely uses vertical well production techniques.” Or as Steve Kennedy, production advisor at EOG Resources and the co-chair of the forum, said at a lunch where he was plugging the forum: “We need to get together and talk about it because these wells are” thoroughly disagreeable to deal with. Actually he put it more emphatically. Two Engineers vs. 300+ Wells There is money to be made in those troublesome old assets. With far more than 100,000 horizontal wells in the US, even small improvements can add up to some real money. Greg Leveille, ConocoPhillips chief technical officer, compared the process to the many small improvements that allowed drillers to slash the time needed to drill shale wells.