- So What is a geologist to do? I took this picture on a lease in Oklahoma.

- What's it say?

- It just says Smith Section 21-9N-3W Cleveland County, Oklahoma. It's just a lease sign. Yeah and then it just says... What is a geologist to do? So, acquisitions and fire sales. I call this the year of the vulture. So, companies, properties, royalties. Here are just a few good candidates for... First of all, if you're going to go in and identify opportunities, some of the things you can do, you can optimize reservoirs, optimize production. It could go in and buy right in producing, or old fields. Right now, everybody's been waiting to see, "Ok, when the bottom going to happen?" This is really a good opportunity. I wouldn't say buy a whole company because you get saddled with all their junk, and I wouldn't even say to buy all their producing properties because again, you get the consequences of indiscriminate drilling. You're gonna get a lot of dogs mixed in. But, if you can pick and choose, and you can actually optimize some of the opportunities, and use new technologies, it's a really interesting opportunity. And, APG, just to put a little plug, we're having a series of workshops called Reservoir Revitalization. We had our first one in Denver a couple weeks ago, We're having another one in San Antonio in December. The whole focus is how exactly to go about taking advantage of the opportunities and what can a geologist do? I'm just going to identify some of the things that can be done like reservoir revitalization. If you are part of a team, let's say you could be a geologist, consulting geologist, helping a company put together and identify candidates, or you can be raising money yourself, or you can team up with engineers and sell pumps or sell chemicals, oil field chemicals. Anyway, there are many, many opportunites besides just the old idea of what you could do in the past, which was primarily come up with a prospect and maybe do a lot of wildcatting and hope for a royalty. Those are good ideas. There are some low hanging fruit that, potentially, is even better with a higher return. You can really, really help some groups with your insight. So, let's look at identifying good candidates for reservoir revitalization. First of all, let's look at mature fields. That's a good opportunity. Another one is shale plays with steep decline rates in the laterals. Among those, there you could have some that really are doing pretty well. Lots of work in re-fracking. Also, maybe even going in and whip-stocking out and drilling out. 98 00:03:20,466 --> 00:03:23,466 Under-stimulated potential between laterals, loss of opportunity, and also, you can actually, probably, in some cases, buy up some of these horizontals that have been drilled but not yet completed and work with some engineers to optimize the completions, and try to stay away from the doggy areas. Of course, that's what everybody wants to sell you. So, that's why your services are needed. 109 00:03:45,500 --> 00:03:47,666 And it's a question in one. In order to do this, as a geologist, you have some questions to ask when you're identifying candidates. What do we do about reservoirs that have lost their drive? So one of the big areas of opportunity are reservoirs that've lost their drive. Now if you can help them regain the drive, you can actually recover some of the oil and gas. So, how can geologists and geophysicists contribute to identifying candidates that have recoverable reserves and engineers? So, first of all, the obvious answer is doing different kinds of floods. So, you could have CO2 floods. CO2 floods are great in certain parts of the country where you have CO2. That's always a good thing Not so good if you don't have very much. But, sometimes you can get CO2 in different areas. So, where is it economically viable? Generally speaking, it's economically viable in the Permian Basin. Other places here and there, but the Permian Basin above all. What are the pros and what are the cons? I mean, the pros are that it works. The cons are that it's highly corrosive, you need to really know what you're doing, and you can lose control of the thing pretty easily. And, it's expensive. So, you really have to work with a really good team of engineers and geologists. And I say chemical engineers. And then, ok, waterfloods. Why and how geology matters. It's one thing there are many, many examples of waterfloods or old fields that were flooded in like, the 50s, and they used what they call riverfloods. They just used whatever water was around. What are some of the consequences of that? I mean, formation damage, right? And channeling, that you don't know about what's going on in the reservoir. Lots of scale. What's another problem? Ok, H2S from a lot of the bacteria and not using biocides, not maintaining a good chemical program. So all that results in the sense that you think, "Oh, that was a failed waterflood, "they've gotten everything, it's out." But actually, you can go back into some of those areas where they waterflooded in the 50's and 60's and those old yucky waterfloods. And there's still going to be they only got out, say 25 percent of the oil, so there's a very good potential for getting out a significant amount. But, you have to know what was going on in the reservoir. You have to be able to model that reservoir, and you as a geologist, or you as an engineer, can work as a team to do that. And understand exactly, and then find out what exactly can you get out of that. And then, also, seismic applications. Loss of drive, if we're talking about loss of drive, if in a horizontal or in shale area, it's good to know seismic, and understand pore pressure geomechanics. I'm not a geomechanic, but there are a lot of people who are specialists and it's very, very useful. And then, what are the pros, what are the cons? And then, also, using 3D seismic to model the reservoir. And also, reprocessing seismic so that you get structure. You can understand structure, and also the fault. So, ok, shale plays. A question: Do they decline because they've lost their drive? Why do they decline? I mean, if you understand why they decline, whether the fractures have healed, whether, you know, the induced fractures really healed, whether or not the fracture networks really worked. There might be fracture interference, there might be proppant embedment, all kinds of things. I attended a really interesting presentation by Charlie Smith of Halliburton, who showed examples of fractures and fracture networks, in a multi-stage completion, and of those stages, only two actually produced anything. Three were actually thief zones. Wow, you know, so understanding, like, loss of what constitutes successful completion. And also, why they're losing their drive. it's very, very useful to know. Ok, so what are the best ways to recover oil within an old field? And is a question too. Use a geologist as an opportunity. Ok, let me check the time to see how we're doing. How much time do you want me to spend? Oh, no! You will be sorry. You'll know when we get up... Ok, yeah, don't be subtle. Ok, infield drilling. Where and why do we drill? Ok, so understanding the depositional environment, understanding the geology. Where to drill, ok. Obviously, if you've got a strat trap, understanding whether it's a point bar, or understanding what it is will help you offset. So this is where being a geologist really makes a difference in understanding how to read the well of the logs, also to just understand if you have core information or petrophysical, learning what to do with it. Geochemistry, what can that tell us? Gas fingerprinting, being used a lot. Isotopes, Chris Lockery, used to be Weatherford, now he's with a different company, does a lot with isotopes. And there's a lot of work being done to be able to tell exactly where the relationships are, and to connect those to areas of gas with the same isotopes, so that there's some potential. Ok, and then, geomechanics. Drive, migration pathways. if you understand where the oil's being squeezed into, or being pushed into, if you understand those mechanics, then you can potentially understand where in the fractures, the fracture networks, where you're going to be able to find not just oil and gas, but recoverable oil and gas. Key point there. And then, also understanding the nature of the pore architecture and how it flows. And then the structure faults, fracture networks, what are the implications of the faults? And then, optimizing operations. We often forget this part. Geologist gets out of the picture, and says, "Ok, I'm out. "I'm just not useful anymore." Not true, not true. I would suggest to each one of you that you, as a geologist, it's a huge opportunity to become involved in production geology. And understand the role of oil field chemicals, not just in the sense of what they do, in like removing scale or whatever, but also how they affect the formation, and how they affect the water. So avoiding formation damage, also helping clean up formations, acidizing where necessary. Corrosion control, very, very important. I would say that a lot of the decline curves, say in the Mississipian, where you have massive, basically what you're producing is oil-stained water. Two to three percent oil cut, and you're coming from limestone. Why does nobody think about, ok, if you don't invest in something to stop scale, that stuff is going to be able to scale it before your eyes, if you're doing that kind of thousand barrels a day production. Also, midstream. Understanding the nature of compression and what that means to optimizing the flow. From the reservoir, in order to keep it going, and not having the fractures and networks close off and heal. Storage. Why not get involved in some of these things? Helping provide solutions. And even with the issue of new pumps and downhole equipment, selecting the right size of pump is really important. Being able to deal with the amount of water. I've personally made a lot of mistakes and boneheaded decisions based on what I thought was a good deal. Turned out to be not a good deal. And then, also, let's think about smart oil fields and remote operations and being able to fine tune what you're doing by having an app that helps you at least identify problems or do things to fine tune the rates of flow, etc. 365 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:01,466 So, synchronous information, sometimes you're drilling, logging while drilling, etc. That helps. So, anyway, we talked about some of these issues if you're doing drilling, smart drilling, geosteering, mudlogging, important, XRF, XRT, logging while drilling. Those are examples of synchronous if you're actually drilling. I'm gonna put in a little interesting experience example of how, if you don't really work in a team, you can make some really bad mistakes when you're going into optimizing an old field. So won't get fooled again. 384 00:12:34,666 --> 00:12:36,832 I thought I had fun with this, so I have a big problem, Graham, check out the new pumping unit. Looks good. Yes, it looks good. But it's horrible, it's not working. What happened? I got fooled again. I thought I got a great deal and a refurbished pumping unit, and it was a great deal. But it was too small, and it's not able to pump off all the water. Well how did you decide on that pumping unit and not another? Well, it was being auctioned, and I got it for a great price. Supposedly, it can handle the volume of water, but it cannot. Plus, it's on a timer, and it freezes up, and does not start pumping when it's supposed to. Can you help me understand about pumping units and mature fields? I would love to. 410 00:13:18,066 --> 00:13:19,532 There's really a lot to selecting the right size of pumping unit. It's always about producing. It is not all about producing, and I'm always eager to share my experience. So this is the very helpful engineer and the very frustrated geologist. Or, entrepreneur, or whatever. So, what are the questions we need to ask when trying to revitalize a reservoir? well, we've already gone over those, but I thought it'd be fun to have like a little first-hand opportunity. We are eager to learn! 426 00:13:44,633 --> 00:13:47,099 Let's talk...so I just threw that in, a little story, but let's look at going back to, we talked earlier about shale. Let's look at completing horizontals.