Methods to Improve Fracture Treatments in Unconventional Reservoirs

The ability to drill and complete horizontal wells has changed the nature of the oil and gas industry. Reservoirs that have low permeability and porosity can be made into economic producers through the process of exposing a very large portion of the reservoir to the wellbore. The goal then becomes to devise a completion scheme that exposes as much of this reservoir as possible to the wellbore at the most efficient cost. When high quality, wide azimuth 3D surface seismic data is available for thick target intervals exhibiting sufficient reflectivity, dipole log data can be inverted with the 3D seismic data to obtain the elastic properties used to predict fracture pressure. When inversion quality data is not available, curvature from surface seismic and/or anisotropy from dipole sonic logs can be used to determine areas of decreased fracture pressure requirement in horizontal wells. Lower fracture pressure will result in less horsepower at the wellsite and reduced stage costs in the completion. Improved production rates will often be a positive result of improved treatments.