Technical Agenda

Session I: Overview of Current Modeling

Session Managers: Nick Koutsabeloulis and Scott Reeves

Geologic, stimulation, and reservoir flow modeling are at the core of understanding and predicting well and field production performance, and ultimately economic outcomes. Yet current models, while advanced, fall short in replicating the actual subsurface physics of each of these aspects. This session will examine the subsurface modeling needs for unconventional reservoirs, how current models match those needs, and the future modeling developments needed to enable better reservoir development and investment decisions.

Session II: Integration—What’s Next?

Session Managers: Scott Reeves and Dan Moos

Today, fracture stimulation and reservoir simulation models are poorly integrated, and geomechanical modeling is seldom incorporated appropriately in either. Present and future requirements will dictate how these models are extended and combined.

This session will address today’s level of integration, how such models will be used in the future, and set the stage for discussions over the next few days.

Session III: The Future of Hydraulic Fracture Modelin

Session Managers: Bruce Meyer, Ernie Brown, and Rick Chalaturnyk

This session will address the future of hydraulic fracture modeling in unconventional reservoirs. We will explore new modeling methods to address complex fracture behavior, rock fabric, stress shadowing, multi-cluster, multi-stage, and multiwall applications. Discussions will address fracture initiation and propagation in horizontal wellbores, mid-field complexity, and fracture conductivity.

Session IV: The Future of Proppant Modelin

Session Managers: Randy Lafollette and Ernie Brown

Today, proppant selection in unconventional reservoirs is based primarily on cost and availability. There is little actual modeling of proppant transport and long-term durability. This session is designed to identify future modeling needed to get proppant selection, placement, conductivity, and durability right the first time.

Session V: Calibration: Modeling Post-Fracturing Flowback and Early Productivity

Session Managers: Mukul Sharma and Mike King

This session will address how integrating well performance, completion, treatment, reservoir, geomechanical, and micro-seismic data can be used to improve our models.

For example:

• How can future models take advantage of this integration to better model post fracturing flowback and initial productivity of fractured wells?
• Where are models adequate (or not)?
• How do you fill in the gaps?

Session VI: Forecasting: Drainage Volume, Production Rates, and Estimated Ultimate Recovery

Session Managers: Mike King and Rick Chalaturnyk

Beyond modeling of post-fracturing flowback and early productivity, our models should provide robust predictions of future performance. Drainage volume estimates and how it evolves over time are important components for these predictions.

The questions to ask include:

• How do we improve our assessment of drainage volumes as well as our understanding of reservoir/well connectivity and fracture conductivity?
• How do we better predict the production behavior of hydraulic fractured wells in unconventional reservoirs?
• Do we understand the fluid recovery mechanisms, and the impact of compaction and geomechanical effects on these recovery mechanisms?

This session will address how to improve prediction of well rates and estimation of the ultimate recovery.

Session VII: Well Interaction, Infill Drilling, and Multi-Well Modeling

Session Managers: Dan Moos and Nick Koutsabeloulis

The key to optimizing value in unconventional reservoirs is determining the spacing and orientation of wells required to exploit the resource.

Such questions as these below will be discussed:

• What is the region of drainage of each well?
• In what order and how should wells be stimulated?
• How can production be managed in order to achieve optimal recovery?

Additionally, this session will address model requirements to enable meaningful design and prediction.

Session VIII: Integration and Workflow

Session Managers: Nathan Meehan and Long Nghiem

Reservoir and fracture modeling represents an unusual challenge because production from unconventional reservoirs is often characterized by very high initial rates, steep declines and long, low rate production “tails” for thousands of wells. Modeling unconventional reservoirs is intimately associated with the modeling and understanding of hydraulic fracturing results; limited petrophysical and other reservoir characterization data are often available.

This session will explore opportunities to dramatically improve the linkage between fracture design, data gathering, and reservoir simulation. Questions such as these will be addressed:

• How do we better use the results of hydraulic fracturing models, microseismic data, and geomechanical models?
• Can we make realistic history matches without production log data?
• How do we quickly provide feedback to optimize future drilling and completion data including fracture design?
• How do we optimize well spacing and placement?

Session IX: Enabling Data Requirements and Forum Summary

Session Managers: Craig Cipolla and Jim Erdle

As we advance our numerical modeling capabilities in unconventional reservoirs, data requirements to populate and calibrate these models will become even more stringent. This session focuses on identifying major gaps in reservoir and geomechanical characterization, hydraulic fracture diagnostic measurements and interpretations, and production monitoring techniques. We will explore the following questions:

• How can we better characterize natural fractures, stress regime, and the multi-scale flow physics in unconventional reservoirs?
• Do we need new measurements technologies?

The session will end with a brief summary of the forum.