Technology Focus: Completions (April 2024)

Abstract

To start a text for high-level readers with a cliché is always a risk, but I will take it: “Data is the new oil.” When British mathematician Clive Humby coined this clever sentence in 2006, the thought-provoking idea behind it was that both oil and data need to be refined and processed to have value. Time and repetition eventually shaped the new, more common-sense meaning that data is as valuable as oil. And when the data refers to oil exploration and production, Humby’s statement becomes resounding, especially in its original meaning. The oil and gas industry, notably the completion activity, with its distributed sensors, optical fibers, permanent downhole gauges, sealed-wellbore pressure monitoring (SWPM), and microseismic, has generated a fantastic amount of data, which has increasingly been properly refined and processed, producing more information—and more oil. A quick search of OnePetro shows the number of papers that deal with the use of artificial intelligence with massive amounts of data that are being made available in the cloud to solve everything from the most prosaic completion decisions to the automatic design of stimulations in naturally fractured reservoirs. A good example of the use of data is shown in paper SPE 212922, which provides an in-depth analysis of interventions in the UK sector of the North Sea. Most of the conclusions, although mostly based on the UK Stewardship Survey, can be easily extrapolated to other regions of the world. And one of them puts its finger on the wound: the fear of asset managers of conducting interventions, even though they appear to be highly effective and economically viable. Paper SPE 212367 discusses the automation of SWPM data analysis for automatic volume-to-first-response matching, a great evolution in the design of refractures in the legendary Eagle Ford shales. And, if the evolution of completing unconventionals led the US to its historic production record in 2023, with more than 16 million BOE/D, in Argentina, shale gas has been a driver of development. The evolution of completions in the most famous unconventional prospect, Vaca Muerta, can be followed in paper SPE 212574. All of these great readings prove the cliché that “data is the new oil.” To complement the reading, a paper that will bring a discreet smile to a generation that breathlessly watched spaceships and even planets being destroyed by lasers, paper SPE 215016, details the industrial use of lasers in perforation. The future has finally arrived. To close the selections, two papers present current and important topics: completion options for carbon capture, use, and storage (SPE 216187) and innovations in autonomous inflow control devices, with the ingenious activation of the apparatus with chemical devices (SPE 216041). Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. SPE 215016 First Industrial High-Power Laser Perforation Deployment by Sameeh I. Batarseh, Saudi Aramco, et al. SPE 216187 Improving Injection Efficiency in CCUS Wells: A Comparative Analysis of Different Completion Designs by Prakasa Bona, Halliburton, et al. SPE 216041Configurable Adaptive Chemical Inflow Control Device Eliminates Intervention by P. Asthana, Saudi Aramco, et al.