Abstract
In the Dunvegan Kaybob South Pool, recent multistage fracked horizontal wells have revealed the presence of a light oil play enveloping a large legacy gas field, developed with vertical wells. The boundary between the oil and gas producing areas intersect structural contours a high angle within deltaic sandstones of the Cretaceous Dunvegan Formation. To address controls on this boundary, a multidisciplinary study of cores, core analysis data, well logs was completed and integrated with test and production data to identify controls on fluid production.
Legacy gas production is from relatively high permeability delta front sandstones, while oil dominated production occurs from lower permeability, fine grained pro-delta deposits. While wells within the legacy gas field produce very low volumes of oil, core fluid extractions reveal significant oil is also present within this portion of the reservoir, but is not mobile. The Dunvegan clearly demonstrates permeability as the main control on the anomalous fluid distributions, with several other tight sandstone plays showing similar relationships, although often more subtle, such as observed in the Cardium, Montney, etc.
The anomalous fluid distributions with higher gas saturations in higher permeability beds and higher oil saturation in lower reservoir quality beds contradict conventional capillary reservoir charge models. Thus, we propose late stage migration of predominantly gas related to the increase in gas generation post peak oil window due to increasing maturity of the kerogen during burial. These late generated gas fluids migrated from the deeper part of the basin preferentially within higher permeability strata and fractures, and displace the earlier emplaced oil resulting in reservoirs with high GOR. These counterintuitive observations with higher liquids production from lower reservoir quality, can significantly improve the play economics and allow better prediction of fluid distribution in many plays.
Introduction
Although unconventional low permeability reservoirs form laterally continuous thick hydrocarbon accumulations, they often have variable liquid saturations vertically and laterally. While varying kerogen type and maturity are important controls. In several plays, fluid distribution shows a strong correlation with permeability, with higher gas saturations occurring in more permeable beds. The control of permeability on anomalous fluid distribution has been discussed for several clastic, low permeability unconventional light oil and liquid rich gas plays in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (e.g. Wood and Sanei 2016, Venieri and Pedersen 2017). In this study we present a study of a legacy gas pool producing from deltaic sandstone reservoirs of the late Cretaceous Dunvegan Formation (Figure 1). The pool is located within the deep basin of western Alberta, an area of pervasive hydrocarbon saturation charged by enveloping thermal mature organic rich mudstones and coals (Masters 1984). The Dunvegan Kaybob South Pool is comprised of a lowstand delta lobe of the southward prograding Dunvegan Delta (Bhattacharya 1993).
