Expro Excellence
Wireless Well Solutions
Downhole monitoring for unconventional gas field development
Customer challenges
  • A major operator in North America needed to optimize well spacing to ensure the effective development of their unconventional gas field
  • The tight gas field in Wyoming, consisted of discontinuous lenticular sands with up to 50 fluvial reservoir sandstones, spread over a 6,000ft gross section
  • Measuring the true formation pressure from the micro-darcy permeabilities is a challenge and presents significant uncertainties over lateral continuity, drainage area and optimal well spacing
  • Each well is completed with many frac stages and previous pressure measurements had been inferred from drilling and fracture injection tests, which were considered less accurate
  • It can take months for pressures to stabilize and provide accurate readings due to transient impairment caused by overbalanced drilling
  • The best solution is to drill a pilot hole and observe the pressure in individual sand packages in one well while producing from another. However, future options to produce from the initial pilot well may be compromised
  • Using a to-be-abandoned well as a monitoring asset provides a cost-effective method for reservoir monitoring, without having to drill a new well for observation purpose
Expro Excellence
  • Expro installed 10 CaTS™ wireless gauges in separate isolated zones in an old production well that was due to be abandoned
  • Expro wireline crews performed a sequence of single zone perforations and plug isolations with a CaTS gauge to monitor each zone
  • The gauges provided up to 3 years of wireless monitoring, transmitting a single pressure and temperature data point every 1 to 2 days
  • The gauges were set below plugs at intervals from ~9270ft to ~7380ft
  • Using conventional abandonment plugs also allowed cement plugs to be set where required as part of the permanent abandonment philosophy
  • As the well was previously a producing well, the gauges were set to monitor existing perforated zones and additional newly perforated zones
  • A new production well was drilled 450ft away allowing for pressure interferences to be detected by the abandoned monitoring asset
Value to client
  • An old well, that was to be abandoned, was successfully converted into a high value, multi-zone reservoir pressure monitoring asset in an unconventional gas field
  • The CaTS gauges provided the first accurate virgin reservoir pressure measurements in the field and showed reservoir pressure equilibrium was reached 4 months after installation
  • Depletion was observed due to the production from the new well after 40 days of production, which confirmed good connectivity
  • The data was used to construct a detailed reservoir model and helped determine drainage area and optimize development well spacing
  • Advanced Reservoir Testing using CaTS gauges is being used to reduce reservoir uncertainties, resulting with optimized field development plans for our customers
  • Wireless monitoring using CaTS gauges provides a long-term, retrofit, real time monitoring solution that can provide accurate measurements of reservoir pressures
  • CaTS gauges are being used to reduce reservoir uncertainties to optimize field development plans and deliver significant value to our customer
Contact

Downhole monitoring for unconventional gas field development

In Brief
Expro's gauges provided up to 3 years of wireless monitoring, transmitting a single pressure and temperature data point every 1 to 2 days
Product Line
  • Wireless Well Solutions
Region
North and Latin America
Customer challenges
  • A major operator in North America needed to optimize well spacing to ensure the effective development of their unconventional gas field
  • The tight gas field in Wyoming, consisted of discontinuous lenticular sands with up to 50 fluvial reservoir sandstones, spread over a 6,000ft gross section
  • Measuring the true formation pressure from the micro-darcy permeabilities is a challenge and presents significant uncertainties over lateral continuity, drainage area and optimal well spacing
  • Each well is completed with many frac stages and previous pressure measurements had been inferred from drilling and fracture injection tests, which were considered less accurate
  • It can take months for pressures to stabilize and provide accurate readings due to transient impairment caused by overbalanced drilling
  • The best solution is to drill a pilot hole and observe the pressure in individual sand packages in one well while producing from another. However, future options to produce from the initial pilot well may be compromised
  • Using a to-be-abandoned well as a monitoring asset provides a cost-effective method for reservoir monitoring, without having to drill a new well for observation purpose
Expro Excellence
  • Expro installed 10 CaTS™ wireless gauges in separate isolated zones in an old production well that was due to be abandoned
  • Expro wireline crews performed a sequence of single zone perforations and plug isolations with a CaTS gauge to monitor each zone
  • The gauges provided up to 3 years of wireless monitoring, transmitting a single pressure and temperature data point every 1 to 2 days
  • The gauges were set below plugs at intervals from ~9270ft to ~7380ft
  • Using conventional abandonment plugs also allowed cement plugs to be set where required as part of the permanent abandonment philosophy
  • As the well was previously a producing well, the gauges were set to monitor existing perforated zones and additional newly perforated zones
  • A new production well was drilled 450ft away allowing for pressure interferences to be detected by the abandoned monitoring asset
Value to client
  • An old well, that was to be abandoned, was successfully converted into a high value, multi-zone reservoir pressure monitoring asset in an unconventional gas field
  • The CaTS gauges provided the first accurate virgin reservoir pressure measurements in the field and showed reservoir pressure equilibrium was reached 4 months after installation
  • Depletion was observed due to the production from the new well after 40 days of production, which confirmed good connectivity
  • The data was used to construct a detailed reservoir model and helped determine drainage area and optimize development well spacing
  • Advanced Reservoir Testing using CaTS gauges is being used to reduce reservoir uncertainties, resulting with optimized field development plans for our customers
  • Wireless monitoring using CaTS gauges provides a long-term, retrofit, real time monitoring solution that can provide accurate measurements of reservoir pressures
  • CaTS gauges are being used to reduce reservoir uncertainties to optimize field development plans and deliver significant value to our customer
Contact

For further information, please contact:

wireless@expro.com