Predicting the production rate and ultimate production of shale resource plays is critical in order to determine if development is economical. In the absence of production from the Shublik Shale, Alaska, Arps' decline model and other newly proposed decline models were used to analyze production data from oil producing wells in the Eagle Ford Shale, Texas. It was found that shales violated assumptions used in Arps' model for conventional hydrocarbon accumulations. Newly proposed models fit the past production data to varying degrees, with the Logistic Growth Analysis (LGA) and Power Law Exponential (PLE) models making the most conservative predictions and those of Duong's model falling in between LGA and PLE. Using a regression coefficient cutoff of 95%, we see that the LGA model fits the production data (both rate and cumulative) from 81 of the 100 wells analyzed. Arps' hyperbolic and the LGA equation provided the most optimistic and pessimistic reserve estimates, respectively. The second part of this study investigates how the choice of residual function affects the estimation of model parameters and consequent remaining well life and reserves. Results suggest that using logarithmic rate residuals maximized the likelihood of Arps' equation having bounded estimates of reserves. We saw that approximately 75% of the well histories that were fitted using the logarithmic rate residual had hyperbolic b-values

In this work, a probabilistic methodology for Decline Curve Analysis (DCA) in unconventional reservoirs is presented using a combination of Bayesian statistical methods and deterministic models. Accurate reserve estimation and uncertainty quantification are the primary objectives of this study. The Bayesian inferencing techniques described in this work utilizes three sampling mechanisms, namely the Gibbs Sampling (implemented in OpenBUGS), the Metropolis Algorithm, and Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) to sample parameter values from their posterior distributions. These different sampling mechanisms are applied in conjunction with DCA models like Arps, Power Law Exponential (PLE), Stretched Exponential Production Decline (SEPD), Duong and Logistic Growth Analysis (LGA) to estimate prediction intervals. Production is forecasted, and uncertainty bounds are established using these prediction intervals. A complete workflow and the summary steps for each of the sampling techniques are provided to permit readers to replicate results. To examine the reliability, the methodology was tested over 74 oil and gas wells located in the three main sub plays of the Permian Basin, namely, the Delaware play, the Central Basin Platform, and the Midland play. Results show that the examined DCA-Bayesian models are successful in providing a high coverage rate, low production prediction errors and narrow uncertainty bounds for the production history data sets. The methodology was also successfully applied to unconventional reservoirs with as low as 6 months of available production history. Depending on the amount of production history available, the combined deterministic-stochastic model that provides the best fit can vary. It is therefore recommended that all possible combinations of the deterministic and stochastic models be applied to the available production history data. This is in order to obtain more confidence in the conclusions related to the reserve estimates and uncertainty bounds. The novelty of this methodology relies in using multiple combinations of DCA-Bayesian models to achieve accurate reserve estimates and narrow uncertainty bounds. The paper can help assess shale plays as most of the shale plays are in the early stages of production when the reserve estimations are carried out.

This work presents the various probabilistic methodology for forecasting petroleum production in shale reservoirs. Two statistical methods are investigated, Bayesian and frequentist, combined with various decline curve deterministic models. A robust analysis of well-completion properties and how they affect the production forecast is carried out. Lastly, a look into the uncertainties introduced by the statistical methods and the decline curve models are investigated to discover any correlation and plays that otherwise would not be apparent. We investigated two Bayesian methods - Absolute Bayesian Computation (ABC) and GIBBS sampler - and two frequentist methods - Conventional Bootstrap (BS) and Modified Bootstrap (MBS). We combined these statistical methods with five empirical models - Arps, Duong, Power Law Model (PLE), Logistic Growth Model (LGA), and Stretched Exponential Decline Model (SEPD) - and an analytical Jacobi 2 theta model. This allowed us to make a robust comparison of all these approaches on various unconventional plays across the United States, including Permian, Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Barnett, and Bakken shale, to get detailed insight on how to forecast production with minimal prediction errors effectively. Analysis was carried out on a total of 1800 wells with varying production history data lengths ranging from 12 to 60 months on a 12-month increment and a total production length of 96 months. We developed a novel approach for developing and integrating informative model parameter priors into the Bayesian statistical methods. Previous work assumed a uniform distribution for model parameter priors, which was inaccurate and negatively impacted forecasting performance. Our results show the significant superior performance of the Bayesian methods, most notably at early hindcast size (12 to 24 months production history). Furthermore, we discovered that production history length was the most critical factor in production forecasting that leveled the performance of all probabilistic methods regardless of the decline curve model or statistical methodology implemented. The novelty of this work relies on the development of informative priors for the Bayesian methodologies and the robust combination of statistical methods and model combination studied on a wide variety of shale plays. In addition, the whole methodology was automated in a programming language and can be easily reproduced and used to make production forecasts accurately.

The massive increase in energy demand and the related rapid development of unconventional reservoirs has opened up exciting new energy supply opportunities along with new, seemingly intractable engineering and research challenges. The energy industry has primarily depended on a heuristic approach—rather than a systematic approach—to optimize and tackle the various challenges when developing new and improving the performance of existing unconventional reservoirs. Industry needs accurate estimations of well production performance and of the cumulative estimated ultimate reserves, accounting for uncertainty. This Special Issue presents 10 original and high-quality research articles related to the modeling of unconventional reservoirs, which showcase advanced methods for fractured reservoir simulation, and improved production forecasting techniques.

In decline curve analysis for hydrocarbon reservoirs, the use of quantile regression instead of the conventional mean regression would be appropriate in the context of oil industry requirement as the fitted quantile regression curves have the correct interpretation for the predicted reserves. However, quantiles of a mean regression result have been commonly reported. In this thesis, we consider non-linear quantile regression model where the quantiles of the conditional distribution of the production rate are expressed as some standard non-linear functions of time, under a Bayesian frame work. The posterior distribution of the regression coefficients and other parameters is intractable mainly due to the non-linearity in the quantile regression function, hence Metropolis Hastings algorithm is used to sample from the posterior. A quantitative assessment of the uncertainty of the decline parameters and the future prediction would be provided for two real datasets.

Various uncertainty quantication methodologies are presented using a combination of several deterministic decline curve analysis models and two bootstrapping algorithms. The bootstrapping algorithms are the conventional bootstrapping method (CBM) and the modied bootstrapping method (MBM). The combined deterministic-stochastic combination models are applied to 126 sample wells from the Permian basin. Results are presented for 12 to 72 months of production hindcast given an average well production history of 120 months. Previous researchers used the Arps model and both conventional and modied bootstrapping with block re-sampling techniques to reliably quantify uncertainty in production forecasts. In this work, we applied both stochastic techniques to other decline curve analysis models|namely, the Duong and the Stretched Exponential Production Decline (SEPD) models. The algorithms were applied to sample wells spread across the three main sub-basins of the Permian. A description of how both the deterministic and stochastic methods can be combined is provided. Also, pseudo-codes that describes the methodologies applied in this work is provided to permit readers to replicate results if necessary. Based on the average forecast error plot in the Permian Basin for 126 active wells, we can also conclude that the MBM-Arps, CBM-Arps, and MBM-SEPD combinations produce P50 forecasts that match cumulative production best regardless of the sub-basin and amount of production hindcast used. Regardless of concerns about the coverage rate, the CBM-Arps, MBM-Arps, CBM-SEPD, and MBMSEPD algorithm combinations produce cumulative P50 predictions within 20% of the true cumulative production value using only a 24-month hindcast. With a 12 month-hindcast, the MBM-Arps combined model produced cumulative P50 predictions with a forecast error of approximately 20%. Also, the CBM-SEPD and MBM-SEPD models were within 30% of the true cumulative production using a 12- month hindcast. Another important result is that all the deterministic-stochastic method combinations studied under-predicted the true cumulative production to varying degrees. However, the CBM-Duong combination was found to severely under-predict cumulative production, especially for the 12-month hindcast. It is not a suitable model combination based on forecast error, especially when hindcast fractions on the low end of the spectrum are used. Accordingly, the CBM- Duong combination is not recommended, especially if production history of no more than 24 months is available for hindcasting. As expected, the coverage rate increased, and the forecast error decreased for all the algorithm combinations with increasing hindcast duration. The novelty of this work lies in its extension of the bootstrapping technique to other decline curve analysis models. The software developed can also be used to analyze many wells quickly on a standard engineering computer. This research is also important because realistic estimates of reserves can be estimated in plays like the Permian basin when uncertainty is correctly quantied.