Forecast of Economic Tight Oil and Gas Production in Permian Basin

Abstract

We adopt a physics-guided, data-driven method to predict the most likely future production from the largest tight oil and gas deposits in North America, the Permian Basin. We first divide the existing 53,708 horizontal hydrofractured wells into 36 spatiotemporal well cohorts based on different reservoir qualities and completion date intervals. For each cohort, we fit the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) statistics to the annual production and calculate the means to construct historical well prototypes. Using the physical scaling method, we extrapolate these well prototypes for several more decades. Our hybrid, physico-statistical prototypes are robust enough to history-match the entire production of the Permian mudstone formations. Next, we calculate the infill potential of each sub-region of the Permian and schedule the likely future drilling programs. To evaluate the profitability of each infill scenario, we conduct a robust economic analysis. We estimate that the Permian tight reservoirs contain 54–62 billion bbl of oil and 246–285 trillion scf of natural gas. With time, Permian is poised to be not only the most important tight oil producer in the U.S., but also the most important tight gas producer, surpassing the giant Marcellus shale play.

Keywords

• unconventional
• EUR
• infill
• geology
• well completion
• technology