Saputra, W.; Kirati, W.; Patzek, T. Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale. Energies2019, 12, 3641.
Saputra, W.; Kirati, W.; Patzek, T. Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale. Energies 2019, 12, 3641.
Saputra, W.; Kirati, W.; Patzek, T. Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale. Energies2019, 12, 3641.
Saputra, W.; Kirati, W.; Patzek, T. Generalized Extreme Value Statistics, Physical Scaling and Forecasts of Oil Production in the Bakken Shale. Energies 2019, 12, 3641.
Abstract
We replace the current industry-standard empirical forecasts of oil production from hydrofractured horizontal wells in shales with a statistically and physically robust, accurate and precise approach, using the Bakken shale as an illustration. The proposed oil production forecasting method extends our previous work on predicting fieldwide gas production in the Barnett shale and merges it with our new scaling of oil production in shales. We first divide the existing 14,678 horizontal oil wells in the Bakken into 12 static samples in which depositional settings and completion technologies are similar. For each sample, we construct a purely data-driven P50 well prototype by merging the GEV distribution fits of oil production from appropriate well cohorts. We fit the parameters of our physics-based scaling curve to the statistical well prototypes, and obtain their smooth extrapolations to 30 years on production. By calculating the number of potential wells of each Bakken region, and scheduling future drilling programs, we stack up the extended well prototypes to achieve the most plausible forecast. We predict that Bakken will ultimately produce 5 billion barrels of oil from the existing wells, with the possible increments of 2 and 6 billion barrels from core and noncore areas.
Keywords
EUR; shale; infill wells; (re)fracturing; pressure depletion; average well; Middle Bakken; Three Forks
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Geology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
