Provides customized selective completion strategies to reduce fracturing expenses, optimize placement, and maximize well productivity
Download PDFUnconventionals
Formation evaluation in shale gas plays is challenging
China
An operator in China’s Sichuan basin needed to evaluate reservoir quality, and identify sweet spots and a location for lateral well placement for horizontal drilling. Halliburton deployed its GEM™ elemental analysis tool, which offers rapid and precise evaluation of formations with complex mineralogies, to identify the sweet spots. Armed with its findings, Halliburton was able to provide customized selective completion strategies with the greatest potential to reduce fracturing expenses, optimize well placement, and maximize well productivity. Exceptional collaboration, intensive research, and prejob planning resulted in a successfully completed job with zero nonproductive time (NPT), health, safety and environment (HSE), or cost of poor quality (COPQ) issues. Additionally, when the GEM tool’s interpretation results were compared to a competitor’s results, there was really no comparison. The GEM tool produced superior dolomization interpretation in the lower marine limestone. This well has been steadily producing 2.82 MMscfd.
In China’s Sichuan basin, shale gas plays have become increasingly more important as operators tap into this prosperous market. However, these unconventional resources can present challenges, especially in formation evaluation. Operators often encounter difficulties evaluating reservoir quality, and identifying sweet spots and well placement locations for horizontal drilling.
With the introduction of Halliburton’s GEM™ elemental analysis tool, we can now provide clients with sweet spot identification. The innovative system design allows the GEM tool to provide the most precise quantitative understanding of complex carbonates and shales. It improves the measurements of magnesium in carbonates and aluminum in clays and shale—until now the most difficult elements to measure, but among the most important needed to describe the reservoir. The GEM tool also measures manganese, a common constituent of carbonates and sheet silicates. Use of these three additional elements—magnesium, aluminum, and manganese—to determine mineralogy improves estimates of porosity, saturation, permeability, detection of swelling clays, and rock mechanical properties. Operators obtain more accurate estimates of their reserves, design optimal completion and stimulation programs, and maximize production.
Halliburton successfully completed this job with zero NPT, HSE, or COPQ issues. Feedback from the operator’s field representative was very positive. The interpretation was completed promptly and coincided with delivery of an international service competitor’s results. After a side-by-side comparison of both parties’ results, the operator came to the conclusion that the GEM tool’s interpretation more closely aligned with core analysis from nearby offset wells. What stood out from the two comparisons was the superior dolomization interpretation in the lower marine limestone based on the GEM tool’s magnesium measurement vs. the “pseudo-magnesium” measurement by the competitor in that dolomized lime interval. Halliburton provided the client with improved porosity and TOC content, identified the sweet spot, and pinpointed the optimal zone for horizontal well placement. This well has been steadily producing 2.82 MMscfd, and Halliburton’s success on this project has paved the way for future work in the area
The GEM Elemental Analysis Service provides precise evaluation of complex mineralogies.
Halliburton formation evaluation services enhance reservoir understanding through our technology and subsurface characteristics for resource development.
