Abstract
Efficiency is driving the cost for shale resource developments. Thus modeling of drilling and completion operations is key for increasing the pace of development in tough economic conditions. The objective is to develop an operational strategy that minimizes downtime on single pads, as well as to manage operations efficiently amongst multiple well pads.
As various options to move equipment are possible, simulation serves as viable tool to analyze the entire process. Field data build the basis for model formulation and calibration. Further, an operations, equipment and scheduling tool was developed to find solutions that allocate resources best possibly along the development.
What is found is that the industry has come quite a long way already in improving the operational sequence and the corresponding logistics of a development. It can be shown that batch drilling is a very successful way of improving efficiency when done correctly and when interdependencies of variables are targeted. To go beyond what is done today, the approach to de-bottleneck operations among all pads in one field of one operator has shown to decrease the time and cost to deliver even further. Through simulation, it is expected that the learning curve is increased and operators can benefit faster.
Detailed simulation of that aspect of a field development has often been neglected, but is applied on the regular basis in various other manufacturing industries world wide. A whole new generation of process modeling in the petroleum industry is started with this approach.
