Scaling the Parent-Child Type Well Construction for Identifying Refracturing Candidate: A Perspective from Reserves Booking

Abstract Well interference is commonly observed as fracture-driven-interaction (FDI) in unconventional reservoir developments and has a critical impact on well production performance. This paper presents a simple yet rigorous method to scale the production profile from parent and child analog wells used to construct type wells to common reference conditions, including productivity potential, proppant/frac-fluid intensity, fracture stage spacing, lateral length and well spacing, etc. A scaling technique is proposed to average the available analog wells in an area of interest to the proposed new wells’ locations that may have varying geological and engineering properties. Further from the reserves booking perspective, the proposed new child wells may not be economic in a certain area based on the scaled production profile. The adjacent parent wells could be re-scaled with the refracturing design and determined as the candidates. In this study, we first establish the representative type well for existing parent and child well groups with P90-P10 interval based on the PNR transformed production data using Arps decline. The flow regime transitions are identified in each type well curve P90-P10. These reference profiles can then be rescaled to design conditions for undrilled wells. Particularly, the production profile of parent-child well pattern for specific uneconomic locations can be identified. Further, the underperforming parent wells with limited drainage pore volume are also selected and rescaled regarding the reference conditions to determine the possibilities of being refracturing candidates. This paper provides a workflow and examples based on actual field data showcasing the applicability and efficacy of analysis, scaling, rescaling, and type well construction. The successful application in field cases proves the workflow recommended in this paper to be of necessity for field-wise decision-making. The outcomes of this study are threefold: 1) Type well generation for normal and FDI well groups are critical to predict EURs for any undrilled well, uncertainty quantification enables the analyst to maintain the consistency and minimize the discrepancy;2) Scaling and re-scaling ascribed to the potential uplift completion design facilitate the analysts to identify the uneconomic reserve bookings; Thus, 3) the potential refracturing candidate can be determined.