<p> Brittleness is a key characteristic for effective reservoir stimulation and is mainly controlled by mineralogy in unconventional reservoirs. Unfortunately, there is no universally accepted means of predicting brittleness from measures made in wells or from surface seismic data. Brittleness indices (BI) are based on mineralogy, while brittleness average estimations are based on Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio. I evaluate two of the more popular brittleness estimation techniques and apply them to a Barnett Shale seismic survey in order to estimate its geomechanical properties. Using specialized logging tools such as elemental capture tool, density, and P- and S wave sonic logs calibrated to previous core descriptions and laboratory measurements, I create a survey-specific BI template in Young's modulus versus Poisson's ratio or alternatively λρ versus μρ space. I use this template to predict BI from elastic parameters computed from surface seismic data, providing a continuous estimate of BI estimate in the Barnett Shale survey. Extracting λρ-μρ values from microseismic event locations, I compute brittleness index from the template and find that most microsemic events occur in the more brittle part of the reservoir. My template is validated through a suite of microseismic experiments that shows most events occurring in brittle zones, fewer events in the ductile shale, and fewer events still in the limestone fracture barriers. </p><p> Estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) is an estimate of the expected total production of oil and/or gas for the economic life of a well and is widely used in the evaluation of resource play reserves. In the literature it is possible to find several approaches for forecasting purposes and economic analyses. However, the extension to newer infill wells is somewhat challenging because production forecasts in unconventional reservoirs are a function of both completion effectiveness and reservoir quality. For shale gas reservoirs, completion effectiveness is a function not only of the length of the horizontal wells, but also of the number and size of the hydraulic fracture treatments in a multistage completion. These considerations also include the volume of proppant placed, proppant concentration, total perforation length, and number of clusters, while reservoir quality is dependent on properties such as the spatial variations in permeability, porosity, stress, and mechanical properties. I evaluate parametric methods such as multi-linear regression, and compare it to a non-parameteric ACE to better correlate production to engineering attributes for two datasets in the Haynesville Shale play and the Barnett Shale. I find that the parametric methods are useful for an exploratory analysis of the relationship among several variables and are useful to guide the selection of a more sophisticated parametric functional form, when the underlying functional relationship is unknown. Non-parametric regression, on the other hand, is entirely data-driven and does not rely on a pre-specified functional forms. The transformations generated by the ACE algorithm facilitate the identification of appropriate, and possibly meaningful, functional forms.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3617030 |
| Date | 31 May 2014 |
| Creators | Perez Altimar, Roderick |
| Publisher | The University of Oklahoma |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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