Evaluating the Reservoir

Because of each shale play's uniqueness, a holistic approach to the reservoir is critical to optimizing returns

Challenge

Understanding the geochemical and petrophysical characteristics of the shale reservoir for future drilling, completions and stimulation programs.

Solution

Operators looking to maximize production in shale can help ensure success by adopting a structured and holistic approach to their drilling, completions, and stimulation designs.

With success in all major shale basins, Halliburton's ShaleStim^® service is a life-cycle based approach to developing shale reserves. It includes a portfolio of shale specific reservoir evaluation and asset development technologies and services to help operators enhance asset value throughout the life of the asset.

Comprehensive lithological, fluid and reservoir analysis

Halliburton's ShaleEval^® shale formation core evaluation service helps operators, geologists, and engineers answer key questions at critical junctures throughout the life of the shale asset. The heart of this service is a team of shale experts applying proven analytical and interpretive skills to provide better understanding of total organic carbon (TOC), shale maturity, gas content, matrix permeability, rock mechanics, fluid sensitivity, and rock strength. ShaleEval service, in collaboration with Halliburton's ShaleLog® and Sigma^® services, can be utilized to optimize treatments in several ways:

• Determines the commercial viability and producibility of the shale reservoir
• Provides mineralogical information needed for field development planning
• Identifies the best treatment fluids, as a result of base fluid sensitivities
• Provides insight into the shale's ductility or brittleness and the best fracture treatment for each particular shale asset
• Evaluates fracture treatment success and helps highlight candidates for future treatments
• Evaluates existing wells for refracture consideration

In-depth knowledge for stimulation

ShaleLog® analysis service for vertical and horizontal wells can assist in deciding exactly where to perforate for an optimized fracture network system. Halliburton experts integrate available wireline log data and core and cuttings data (ShaleEval service) to help define the characteristics of potential shale reservoirs surrounding both the vertical and horizontal wellbores. Data from advanced logging tools, including mechanical rock properties (WaveSonic® service) and elemental analysis (GEM™ tool), can be used to enhance the quantitative results obtained from the ShaleLog Service. Horizontal LWD and horizontal logging information can also be used as input for ShaleLog analysis service to help calculate brittleness, identify mineralogy and determine effective porosity before perforating and stimulation. ShaleLog service results help to:

• Identify targets to complete
• Determine if the shale will frac and the relative fracture width
• Quantify total organic carbon (TOC), thermal maturity, gas in place and content
• Reduce risk of unnecessary fracture treatments
• Identify regional stress and fracture initiation points
• Provide the insight needed to design optimized fracture treatments

Designing the optimal stimulation treatments based on insights gained from ShaleEval and ShaleLog

Halliburton's shale stimulation process encompasses technologies to help operators enhance asset value throughout the shale reservoir life cycle. These include:

• Shale fracturing design service to help understand and engineer complex fracture networks and enable real time management of the process
• Shale fluids and proppants customized for the formation
• Shale fracturing fluid additives that include specially designed chemicals and processes designed to prevent or remediate formation or fracture flow damage, and loss of network conductivity

Additional formation evaluation inputs for shale

Halliburton offers additional LWD and logging technologies that enhance or supplement the ShaleLog service, including InSite ADR™, LaserStrat® Wellsite Chemostratigraphy Service, and GEM™ Elemental Analysis tool. See Targeting the Sweet Spot for more details.

When difficult logging conditions result in missed zones of openhole information, operators can literally "fill in the gaps" with the Chi Modeling® post-processing service. The Chi Modeling  serivce is able to predict triple-combo or even quad-combo openhole data with a high degree of accuracy using input data obtained from two sources: a capture pass of a pulsed neutron tool, and a known triple-combo or quad-combo data set from a neighboring well.