Extended Laterals and Hydraulic Fracturing Redevelop Tight Fractured Carbonates
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: July 2024

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This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 216292, “Redevelopment of Tight Fractured Carbonates Through Extended Laterals and Hydraulic Fracturing,” by Antonio Buono, Cameron Taylor, and Alyssa Dordan, SPE, ExxonMobil, et al. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

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In the complete paper, the authors compare development scenarios in a fractured carbonate play between historic vertical and short horizontal development and modern hydraulically fractured extended lateral development. Because of its long production history and recent redevelopment efforts, the Austin Chalk was chosen as a natural laboratory to test how recent artificial stimulation techniques can lead to additional production from a wider range of pore systems.

Development of the Austin Chalk

In recent years, application of modern unconventional multistage hydraulic fracturing techniques, coupled with adding proppant to support induced fracture networks, mitigated the steep decline seen in historic production profiles. These improvements were exemplified in a recent Austin Chalk redevelopment where modern completions led to an increase in estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) by 250% on average.

In the targeted area of development, historic, short Austin Chalk laterals without modern completions exhibited a wide range of well performance. Some outlier wells achieved high recoveries from accessing an existing natural fracture network with the original completion, whereas others, after only a few months of economic production, were unable to achieve continuous flow without a propped stimulation.

The differences in performance partially can be explained by the fact that the reservoir quality of different intervals within the Austin Chalk is likely highly variable. This is exemplified in the B-2 Zone, which contains a well-developed vertical fracture network with variable lengths. Data suggest that the natural fractures are confined within the B-2 and it is geomechanically less-susceptible to wellbore collapse than zones with higher clay concentrations. The B-2 is likely a stiffer interval than the E Zone. This implies that differences exist in the properties of these units that are caused by changes in mineralogy and cementation. The authors aim to characterize reservoir quality and hydrocarbon distributions of the fractured relatively clean zones compared with the hydraulically stimulated reservoir in relatively “dirty” chalky zones, and evaluate geomechanical properties and production expectations from each zone.

Depositionally, these units can be characterized broadly as carbonate-rich with subordinate siliciclastic detritus composed of clay minerals and silt-sized quartz and plagioclase grains. These units all contain distinctive stylolite seams. The most-favorable hydrocarbon shows typically are in the lower members of the Austin Chalk. Production data show that natural-fracture-only production (heritage) generally has lower total EUR with highly variable well-to-well production profiles vs. fracture and matrix production, which the authors write that they believe is achieved when unconventional technology is applied to these reservoirs.

To project from heritage chalk production to expected EUR using modern completions, the authors used a risked EUR scaling factor of 1.5×. Consequently, the potential uplift in economic viability was recognized through a multiwell Austin Chalk appraisal to assess well-to-well communication with Eagle Ford codevelopment. The authors’ appraisal evaluated reservoir-quality differences between the main landing zones in the Austin Chalk with those from the E Zone of the Austin Chalk and Upper Eagle Ford, respectively, to demonstrate how significant economic uplift can be realized in mature, tight carbonate fields with unconventional technology.