ESG Solutions has recently introduced a new service within its Enhanced Reservoir Characterization (ERC) offering for hydraulic fracturing.
The Flow Dynamics Suite uses a statistical approach to understanding seismicity and reservoir processes for improved hydraulic fracture efficiencies, and demonstrates a unique potential for outlining production from hydraulic fracturing.
Within the unconventional oil and gas industry, operators continue to strive to maximize production efficiencies. Historically, they have looked to microseismic monitoring as one tool to provide feedback on fracture generation, relying on the evaluation of discrete seismic event locations as an indicator of successful reservoir stimulation. ESG's newest microseismic analysis service represents a dramatic shift in the way that microseismic data is evaluated. "While an individual microseismic event corresponds to slip on a discrete surface, the combined deformation of a group of events results in a collective behavior," says Ted Urbancic, Chief Technology Officer at ESG Solutions. "Here, we are invoking new statistical theories drawing from the field of fluid mechanics that demonstrate that it is the collective behavior of seismicity that actually reveals the most valuable information about reservoir deformation."
The Flow Dynamics Suite uses a selection of dynamic parameters to identify processes that play important roles in the dynamic expansion of a fracture network during hydraulic fracture stimulations while evaluating reservoir deformation efficiency. "We are seeing some exciting correlations between these dynamic parameters and other oilfield data such as gamma logs, tracers and production logs," says Urbancic.
ESG's ERC service represents nearly a decade of R&D focused on advanced microseismic analysis in unconventional reservoirs. Fundamentally, ERC aims to characterize reservoir deformation as flow through the reservoir, to understand factors like stress state, fracture complexity, and ease of reservoir deformability, and ultimately link this information to the potential for production and reserve estimation. ERC evaluates reservoir behavior using two primary tools: ESG's Seismic Moment Tensor Inversion (SMTI) Production Suite and the Flow Dynamics Suite. "With these tools, it is possible to estimate an effective stimulated reservoir volume and generate new inputs for geomechanical and reservoir models, ultimately aiding in decline curve estimation," says Eric von Lunen, Senior Advisor at ESG Solutions. The information also helps optimize completions; particularly focusing on wellbore placement, fracture containment, stage spacing and perforation design.
ESG is presenting and exhibiting this week at the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas from October 16-21.