Redevelopment of the Cardium Formation Using Fractured Horizontal Wells: Reservoir Engineering Perspectives and Early Case Histories
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract According to the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board, the Cardium Formation holds about 25% of Alberta's total discovered conventional oil resource, amounting to over 10 billion barrels of oil-in-place. In spite of its enviable size, oil quality (36 to 40 degrees API) and significant dissolved gas content, the cumulative production from this clastic play, as of December 2009, was approximately 1.75 billion barrels (since the onset of oil production in 1957). This represents an achieved Recovery Factor of only 17%, from a combination of primary, secondary and tertiary recovery schemes with predominantly vertical drilling in various parts of the formation. Since late 2008, however, operators have shown that redeveloping the Cardium Formation with multi-stage hydraulically fractured horizontal wells has the potential to significantly increase production by increasing reservoir contact in the undeveloped and under-developed areas. This paper presents a brief review of the historical performance of vertical wells in the low reservoir quality areas of the Cardium and then describes the impact of placing multi-stage fractured horizontal producers in these areas. The paper deals with the redevelopment of the Cardium Formation from a primary recovery perspective only – with a focus on the fringe areas around the super-giant Pembina field as well as the development of the largely untapped resource in the "A" lobe of the Cardium in the Garrington/Caroline areas. The development of these portions of the Cardium constitutes an extension to previous estimates of Original Oil-In-Place and significant additional recovery potential. The performance of the over 120 multi-stage fractured horizontals that have been placed on production (as of June 2010) is discussed from geologic, reservoir engineering, development modeling and economic analyses perspectives. The authors include some proposals for "typical" Cardium horizontal well performance profiles for reserves assignment purposes and, in closing, they present some data-gathering and forward-modeling recommendations for Cardium operators/stake-holders that would enable them to maximize the near- and long-term values of their assets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".