Understanding Water Flood Response in Tight Oil Formations: A Case Study of the Lower Shaunavon

Abstract

Abstract The evolution of producing resource plays in Saskatchewan Canada has gained momentum in the last 10 years. Many new tight formations in Western Canada have been discovered or are now economic to bring on production due to the emergence of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. One play gaining momentum over the last few years has been the Lower Shaunavon located in the south west quadrant of Saskatchewan. Through learning's from tight oil plays, such as the Bakken, Crescent Point has been able to apply some of the development strategies to the Lower Shaunavon; however, there is still a large factor of uncertainty and risk involved in these tight formation plays. Reservoir modelling can be used as a tool to reliably forecast well performance and reduce future risk and uncertainty. An eighteen well numerical simulation model was built to represent Crescent Point Energy's Lower Shaunavon waterflood pilot area. Numerical simulation was used as a tool to obtain a better understanding of the reservoir and hydraulic fracture parameters in the area along with waterflood response in the tight oil play. A history match on the pilot area was performed. Using parameters obtained from the history match, a representative model was built and a sensitivity study was performed on hydraulic fracture spacing and well spacing in both primary depletion and waterflood scenarios. This paper will discuss the workflow, challenges, and general findings related to waterflood performance on Lower Shaunavon. While industry continues to study and optimize hydraulic fracturing decisions, the combination of these decisions with IOR potential, namely waterflooding tight oil plays, needs to be understood. Developing a workflow that enables optimization of both fracture completions (spacing, half lengths, etc.) and water injection schemes may lead to a more complete approach to maximizing asset value.