The Hunt for Unrecovered Barrels in the Permian Basin

_ Case studies from Devon Energy, ConocoPhillips, and others show how clever engineering and technology are being used to improve recovery and asset value. This year’s recent spike in oil prices due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has likely held off what was expected to be a peak in US shale production. But the events happening half a world away from the Permian Basin—home to almost half of all US production—do not mean that the shale sector’s shared mission to improve recovery rates is over. What many technical experts, upstream executives, and even the US government are hoping to achieve in the next phase of tight oil production are ways to improve upon the widely cited recovery rate of only about 10% of all the oil in place. The scope of this challenge is hard to understate given that the industry has been working on this problem from different angles since almost the inception of the Shale Revolution. How to wring more barrels out of tight rocks has been the subject of many papers at recent conferences, including the SPE Permian Basin Energy Conference held in Midland, Texas, in September. What follows is a curated summary of some of the papers that were presented in Midland that include insights from operators and technology developers. The mix of case studies demonstrate how companies are trying to squeeze more out of the Permian with creative engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), subsurface chemistry, and proppant technologies. Grabbing What’s Left With Smart Infill Drilling One of the well-known facts of life in the shale patch is that early well designs left behind a lot of stranded reserves. Those vintage completions typically used much wider fracture cluster spacing than is common in today’s designs, leaving significant volumes of rock understimulated. The result has been a growing opportunity for operators to revisit these assets through liner-based refracturing campaigns.