How Permanent DTS Installation Could Improve Well and Reservoir Knowledge

The paper describes, by means of real and blind example, how the continuous thermal profiling provided by permanent DTS is useful for many extra application than the pure fluid allocation purposes. For an unconventional reservoir a permanent and continuous monitoring tool represents the key point to provide a correct management of the reservoir and hence to maximize the recovery factor of the field. The proposed case is based on a horizontal producer drilled in gas shale located in North America. In order to evaluate which are the possible issues that could affect the overall monitoring system, DTS analysis already started before the production phase, directly during the installation. This was the occasion to test and bring the technology to the next step: a proper analysis of the data taken during installation provides additional informations about wellbore conditions whereas the warmback dataset, that followed frack job, increased knowledge about the dynamic attitude of the fractures just created, providing a qualitative forecast about the expected production profile. The final result is that the continuous update in temperature profiling given by DTS could improve significantly well efficiency knowledge and the reservoir performances evaluation even when no further investigations are feasible in the wellbore.