American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2015 - 73

SpecialReport: Unconventional Resource Science
In this Permian Basin example, propped
fracture half-lengths and heights were
determined for three wells completed in
the Middle Spraberry, Lower Spraberry,
and Wolfcamp A intervals. The wells
were vertically stacked above one another,
indicating the potential to optimize wellbore spacing (Figure 6). The microseismic
data showed an undeveloped gap between
the Middle and Lower Spraberry, indicating that the vertical wellbore spacing
between the two likely was excessive
with the completion methods used. This
left the potential for placing a wellbore
in the Jo Mill formation for ideal exploitation of the reservoir.
In addition, proppant placement analysis indicated the potential for two wellbores
in both the Middle and the Lower Spraberry, laterally offset from each other. Vertical
wellbore spacing between the Lower

PETER M. DUNCAN is founder
and co-chairman of MicroSeismic Inc.
in Houston. He began his career as
an exploration geophysicist with Shell
Canada and then Digicon Geophysical.
In 1992, he co-founded 3DX Technologies Inc., a publicly traded independent oil and gas exploration company, where he served until forming
MicroSeismic in 2003. Duncan is a
past president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and an honorary member of SEG, the Canadian
Society of Exploration Geophysicists,
the Geophysical Society of Houston,
and the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers. He holds a
Ph.D. in geophysics from the University
of Toronto.
CARL W. NEUHAUS is completions
evaluation team leader at MicroSeismic
Inc., responsible for engineering applications and integrating engineering
data with geology, geophysics and
geomechanics. With five years of petroleum engineering experience, he
served at Thonhauser Data Engineering GmbH and the FAST Research
Consortium at the Colorado School
of Mines before joining MicroSeismic
in 2011 as a development engineer.
Neuhaus holds a B.S. and an M.S. in
petroleum engineering from the Mining
University of Leoben, and an M.S. in
petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.

Spraberry and the Wolfcamp A seems to
be appropriate, and has sufficient coverage
of the Dean formation separating the two.
This type of analysis not only significantly shortened the appraisal timeline
and accelerated the learning process for
the operator, but also maximized net present value by optimizing vertical and lateral
wellbore spacing.
Microseismic technology continues to
evolve and improve to provide operators

with more accurate and complete answers
to some of their biggest questions. Fullwaveform, downhole imaging technology
is one such evolution. This technology
allows oil and gas companies operating
in basins less suitable for surface microseismic to cost effectively reap the benefits
of improved well spacing, stage length,
geohazard avoidance in real time, and
more.
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FEBRUARY 2015 73

American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2015

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