Paying it Forward: How an Emerging Unconventional Play can Hit the Ground Running

While every tight oil play is unique, there are lessons that can be transferred from one play to another to improve the efficiency and pace of production operations and development. These improvements may not fit precisely in every basin or play but generally hold to themes that can be tested against and built upon. Themes such as the quantity of proppant, longer lateral length, or the number of stages can be directly tied to increased productivity. However, there are diminishing returns on these investment activities for which each operator, within a given play, will be required to identify and mitigate against. This is especially true as the industry steps in and begins developing new tight oil plays. In their nascent stages, these plays may have limited well penetrations and, as a result, limited geological and performance data from which to extrapolate. Pulling together an understanding of where the industry currently resides in terms of how to exploit these resources can provide a boost in terms of working towards greatly improved well completions. In 2019, the US EIA estimated that nearly 8 million barrels of oil per day were produced from tight oil reservoirs in the United States (US EIA, 2020). This represents over 60% of the domestic crude production, originating from multiple reservoirs in the Permian Basin (TX) as well as the Bakken (MT, ND), Eagle Ford (TX), Niobrara (CO, WY), and Anadarko Basin (OK) formations, among others. As such, there are 1,000s of wells across these numerous tight oil plays that can relate an informative story. To build this story, the interplay of geology, well spacing, lateral length, and stimulation, all critical to economic success, will be explored. This paper proposes to look back at these mature tight oil (and gas) basins and bring forth an understanding of what lessons can be applied to the emerging Powder River Basin tight oil reservoirs (Mowry and the Turner/Frontier). The authors will delve into the four broad topics of geology, well spacing, lateral length, and stimulation, highlighting case studies to demonstrate those lessons from established tight oil plays that will underpin planned activities at a Field Laboratory Test Site in the southern Powder River Basin.

Subsurface Hydrocarbon Degradation Strategies in Low- and High-Sulfate Coal Seam Communities Identified with Activity-Based Metagenomics

Environmentally relevant metagenomes and BONCAT-FACS derived translationally active metagenomes from Powder River Basin coal seams were investigated to elucidate potential genes and functional groups involved in hydrocarbon degradation to methane in coal seams with high- and low-sulfate levels. An advanced subsurface environmental sampler allowed the establishment of coal-associated microbial communities under in situ conditions for metagenomic analyses from environmental and translationally active populations. Metagenomic sequencing demonstrated that biosurfactants, aerobic dioxygenases, and anaerobic phenol degradation pathways were present in active populations across the sampled redox gradient. In particular, results suggested the importance of anaerobic degradation pathways under high-sulfate conditions with an emphasis on fumarate addition. Under low-sulfate conditions, a mixture of both aerobic and anaerobic pathways were observed but with a predominance of aerobic dioxygenases. The putative low-molecular weight biosurfactant, lichysein, appeared to play a more important role compared to rhamnolipids. The novel methods used in this study-- subsurface environmental samplers in combination with metagenomic sequencing of both translationally active metagenomes and environmental genomes-- offer a deeper and environmentally relevant perspective on community genetic potential from coal seams poised at different redox potentials broadening the understanding of degradation strategies for subsurface carbon.

Removal of Ions From Produced Water Using Powder River Basin Coal

Although becoming less attractive as an energy source, coal has significant potential for other, more sustainable uses including water treatment. In this study, we present a simple approach to treat water that was produced during oil production and contained a total dissolved solids (TDS) content of over 150 g/L using Powder River Basin (PRB) coal. PRB coal used as packing material in a flow-through column effectively removed 60-80% of the cations and anions simultaneously. Additionally, 71-92% of the total organic carbon in the produced water was removed as was all of the total suspended solids. The removal mechanisms of both cations and anions were investigated. Cations were removed by ion exchange with protons from oxygen-containing functional groups such as carboxylic and phenolic hydroxyl groups. Anions, mainly Cl-1, appeared to be removed through either the formation of resonance structures as a result of delocalization of electrons within coal molecules or through ion-π interactions. We propose that coal is a “pseudo-amphoteric” exchange material that can remove cations and anions simultaneously by exchanging ions with both ionized and non-ionized acids that are ubiquitous in coal structure or resonance effect.

Optimizing Completion Design and Well Spacing in the Powder River Basin Niobrara Oil Play

A seven-step workflow to help subsurface teams establish an initial thesis for optimal completion design (cluster spacing, proppant per cluster) and well spacing in emerging / under-explored resource plays is proposed and executed for the Powder River Basin Niobrara unconventional oil play. The workflow uses Rate Transient Analysis (RTA) to determine the Ac∗k parameter and then walks the reader through how to sequentially decouple the parameter into its constituent parts (frac height (h), number of symmetrical fractures achieved (nf), permeability (k) and fracture half-length (xf)). Once these terms were quantified for each of the case study wells, they were used in a black oil reservoir simulator to compare predicted verses actual cumulative oil performance at 30, 60, 90,120 & 180 days. A long-term production match was achieved using xf as the lone history match parameter. xf verses proppant per effective half-cluster yielded an R2 value of > 0.90. 28 simulation scenarios were executed to represent a range of cluster spacing, proppant per cluster and well spacing scenarios. Economics (ROR and/or NPV10/Net Acre) were determined for each of these scenarios under three different commodity pricing assumptions ($40/$2.50, $50/$2.50 and $60/$2.50). An initial thesis for optimal cluster spacing, proppant per designed cluster and well spacing were determined to be 12’, 47,500 lbs and 8-14 wells per section (based on whether or not fracture asymmetry is considered) when WTI and Henry Hub are assumed to be $50 & $2.50 flat.

Local-Distance Seismic Event Relocation and Relative Magnitude Estimation, Applications to Mining Related Seismicity in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming

ABSTRACT Recent efforts to characterize small (Mw<3) seismic events at local distances have become more important because of the increased observation of human-triggered and induced seismicity and the need to advance nuclear explosion monitoring capabilities. The signals generated by low-magnitude seismic sources necessitate the use of nearby short-period observations, which are sensitive to local geological heterogeneity. Local to near-regional distance (<300 km) surface and shear waves can dominate short-period observations from small, shallow seismic sources. In this work, we utilize these observations to estimate precise, relative locations and magnitudes of ∼700 industrial mining events in Wyoming, using nearly 360,000 observations. The precise, relative location estimates (with formal location uncertainty estimates of less than 1 km) collapse a diffuse collection of mining events into discrete clusters associated with individual blasting operations. We also invert the cross-correlation amplitudes to estimate precise, relative moment magnitude estimates, which help validate and identify disparities in the event sizes reported by regional network catalogs. Joint use of multiple phases allows for the inclusion of more seismic events due to the increase in the number of observations. In some cases, using a single phase allowed us to relocate only 50% of the original reported seismic events within a cluster. Combining shear- and surface-wave phases increased the number of events to above 90% of the original events, allowing us to characterize a broader range of event sizes, source to station distances, and event distributions. This analysis takes a step toward making a fuller characterization of small industrial seismic events observed at local distances.