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Optimize Results in Unconventional Plays

Maximize Production, Minimize Costs

With significant geological variability and erratic production rates, unconventional oil and gas operators face complex challenges.

Optimizing these plays requires deep subsurface knowledge throughout the full development lifecycle: exploration, evaluation, drilling, completion and production. Ikon Science delivers integrated workflows spanning the E&P lifecycle, providing a deep understanding of the subsurface to our customers. Our solutions help operators know more about changes in rock properties to optimize well placement and completion design to maximize production while minimizing costs.

Solutions for Today’s Challenges

Integrated Workflows

Well post-mortem brings together petrophysics, image log and stress orientation interpretation with drilling and seismic inversion data to develop a calibrated and predictive 3D geomechanical model that can be used to drive future well placement and design.

Integrated Workflows

Exploration and utilization often occur simultaneously in a single drilling effort – creating complex targeting plans. Ultimately, a full understanding of the subsurface is required that integrates all available data to drive decisions on where to place the well, how to stimulate it and what the likely production is to maximize return and achieve production targets. Integration is key, and value can only be realized through analysis of multiple data types across multiple disciplines, leading to more robust 1D geomechanical models that can have direct and timely impact on drilling and completion decisions. Ikon Science provides high quality, integrated rock physics models to build a deeper understanding of the seismic data using proprietary inversion techniques. These properties can all be integrated to develop a 3D rock mechanical volume to improve strategic and operational decisions ahead of the bit.

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Well Placement & Geosteering

Ikon’s Joint Impedance and Facies Inversion (JiFi) solution delivers significant uplift over conventional model-based inversion techniques in this tight gas unconventional setting in Alberta, Canada. The uplift in detection and resolution delivers a step change in well planning and geosteering accuracy and efficiency.

Well Placement & Geosteering

By building precise high-resolution images of the subsurface, operators can make better, more informed decisions on well placement and geosteering. It is critical to map unconventional facies from seismic, and our solutions provide operators more effective predictive models using this data-driven approach. By improving interpretations of subtle lateral variations in complex seismic response, these facies volumes help operators geosteer around lenses of hard rock and steer the well in the targeted lateral section with more confidence.

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Well Planning & Design

3D perspective of pore pressures predicted in the Delaware basin through integration of 1D wellbore analysis and 3D facies-based inversion. Ikon’s Rock Physics model-driven correction of TOC variation in 3D allowed robust prediction of pore pressure – a driving factor in production performance in this play.

Well Planning & Design

To optimize for cost effective, safe operations, there are many factors to consider in well design. One key challenge in drilling the horizontal section is related to staying within zone, since the formations are often thin with large lateral extent. Ikon’s high-resolution Joint Impedance and Facies Inversion (JiFi) solution provides critical 3D seismic data with depths to top of target interval and interval thicknesses. The analysis, modeling and prediction of offset well behavior and transformation from LWD / wireline to seismic resolution is often key to better understand the subsurface at a variety of scales. Through careful integration of this subsurface data, we can help operators leverage the link between stress state and rock properties to better guide the selection of optimum landing locations not possible using well data alone.

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Well Performance & Fracture Stimulation

Fracture initiation pressure cube predicted from 3D seismic and 1D wellbore analysis is used to predict and rectify mud-weight programs in future drilling programs in the Permian basin, Texas, US.

Well Performance & Fracture Stimulation

When hydraulically stimulating horizontal wells, operators must clearly understand the area’s stress state and rock properties, and their impact on the fracture behavior. By integrating multiple datasets, offset well data, engineering data and seismic data, we help operators construct accurate elastic property volumes to understand lateral variations. Using these property volumes in the geomechanical workflow allows the stresses and associated fracture initiation pressures to be resolved at and away from well locations. Volume sculpting can be performed by combining the elastic properties, stresses and pore pressures to determine volumes of potentially productive rock or maximum volumes of rock that can be stimulated and contribute to the Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR).

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WHITE PAPER

Exploiting Unconventional Resources

Learn how to reduce risk and enhance production through integrated subsurface understanding.

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Find out how to gain a deeper understanding and improve business outcomes of unconventional plays.

Schedule a consultation with our experts to discuss the challenges you face in your conventional plays.

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