Estimation of Stimulated Reservoir Volume using the Concept of Shale Capacity and its Validation with Microseismic and Well Performance

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Estimation of Stimulated Reservoir Volume using the Concept of Shale Capacity and its Validation with Microseismic and Well Performance

167778-MS

The proper estimation of shale reserves requires the understanding and the mapping in 3D of the Actual Stimulated Reservoir Volume (ASRV) which has been frequently overestimated and mistaken as the Microseismic Stimulated Reservoir Volume (MSRV). This paper describes a new robust workflow that uses a reservoir simulator and a new reservoir property called the Shale Capacity to estimate the actual SRV and the subsequent reserves resulting from the interaction between the fracing and the response of the reservoir. The actual SRV seems to be related mostly to the Shale Capacity defined as the product of four key shale drivers: Total Organic Content, Porosity, Brittleness, and Natural Fracture Density. When producing a shale reservoir, it appears that the Relative Intercepted Shale Capacity (RISC), seems to have a strong correlation with the resulting actual SRV.

Actual SRV in shale reservoirs could be estimated with reasonable accuracy if the 3D shale capacity model is used in a reservoir simulator to reproduce the well performance. Additionally, the microseismic could be used to validate the derived actual SRV which is a subset of the microseismic SRV..
Results, Observations, and Conclusions: These concepts are illustrated with a Marcellus example where the actual SRV was estimated using the shale capacity and microseismic events validated the areas where the well is actually draining from. Estimation of the SRV based on a reservoir property call Shale Capacity that captures all the reservoir properties responsible for the shale well performance.