Production
Core Laboratories’ data describing the reservoir system are used by engineers, geologists, and geophysicists worldwide to enhance hydrocarbon production so that it will exceed the 40% average oilfield recovery factor. The most effective means of enhancing production is controlling formation damage, the leading cause of underperforming wells worldwide. No one can do more than Core Laboratories to identify, remediate, and minimize the damage to producing formations that can occur during drilling and completion of a well.
Production Enhancement
Two production enhancement methods commonly used are hydraulic fracturing of the reservoir rock to improve flow and flooding the field with water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or hydrocarbon gases to force more oil and gas to the wellbore.
Hydraulic Fracturing
Hydraulic fracturing is typically achieved by pumping a proppant material in a gel slurry into the reservoir zone at extremely high pressures. This forces fractures to open in the rock and “props” the fractures open so that reservoir fluids can flow to the production wellbore.
Unfortunately, less than 50% of hydraulic fractures result in optimum production. A thorough understanding of the reservoir system is necessary for success. And Core Laboratories provides patented and proprietary completions diagnostics technology to help you achieve it.
By coupling our data on rock types and strength you can ensure that proppants are placed as they were intended in the stimulation design, enabling you to significantly increase hydrocarbon production.
In addition, Core Laboratories’ testing indicates whether the gel slurry is compatible with the reservoir fluids so that the porous rock network is not damaged.
Field Floods
An oilfield can yield additional quantities of hydrocarbons when an operator floods the producing zone with water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or a miscible gas. When our reservoir description datasets are combined with dynamic flow tests run in our laboratories, a field flood program can be implemented to maximize hydrocarbon recovery. We conduct dynamic flow tests of the reservoir fluids through the reservoir rock, at actual reservoir pressure and temperature, to realistically simulate the actual flooding of a producing zone.
The success of a flood design can be bolstered by using our proprietary field flood tracer technologies to track the movement of the flooding agent. This enables you to identify injection flow patterns and pinpoint fluid breakthrough paths. This information can be used to remediate breakthroughs or short circuits, improving the benefit of the flooding agent; therefore, increasing recovery of hydrocarbons.
Formation Damage
Formation damage limits daily production and severely reduces the ultimate recovery from the field by up to 25%. These economics make the avoidance and mitigation of formation damage a top priority. To ensure the maximum return possible, you frequently have to stimulate the reservoir to yield additional production. The reservoir rock and fluid data dictate the most effective way to complete the well and stimulate the formation. If it is completed improperly, the producing formation will be damaged; and hydrocarbon flow to the wellbore will be impaired.
Core Laboratories provides well completion perforating gun systems specifically designed to minimize formation damage while maximizing the communication, or transmissibility, between the producing formation and the wellbore. Core is in the best position to recommend patented and proprietary perforating systems and prepare the reservoir for stimulation.
Reservoir production is significantly enhanced whenever formation damage can be controlled. Formation damage is a multi-billion-dollar/year problem for the oil and gas industry; and no one can do more to identify, remediate, and minimize formation damage than Core Laboratories.