WellDog announces new shale sweet spot technical service

WellDog has announced the launch of its Shale SweetSpotter service, the first commercial reservoir-evaluation analysis technology specific to unconventional oil and gas, following successful field trials with its industry partner in the Marcellus shale.

WellDog’s unique next-generation downhole technical service uses lasers and sophisticated detectors to identify the locations where hydrocarbons occur in shale formations, allowing producers to focus development efforts, reduce drilling costs, optimise production, and reduce the number of hydraulic fracturing stages and associated water usage.

“This development really changes the way operators can approach their new field development and refracturing decisions,” said James Walker, COO of WellDog. “This new service provides a high level of assurance that our customers are going to land their laterals in high quality pay zones.”

The service uses WellDog’s award-winning Reservoir Raman System, which was originally developed to find sweet spots in coalbed methane developments. In 2014, the company began developing new shale-based applications for the technology. Shale SweetSpotter was developed with the target of doubling the number of producing fracks. This is accomplished by using the industry’s only downhole Raman spectrometer to directly identify locations of producible hydrocarbons across the formations, making the service more accurate, reliable, affordable and quick to deploy in comparison to traditional lab-based services.

In a time of rising development costs, downward commodity price pressures and slimming margins, technologies such as this new service helps significantly improve well economics and boost well performance via efficiency gains, allowing operators to optimise economics on both the exploration and production sides of the development equation.

“With oil prices fluctuating near breakeven, operators are searching for methods to reduce finding costs and increase output,” said John Pope, Ph.D., President and CEO of WellDog. “This service, when properly deployed, will increase estimated ultimate recovery as well as reduce exploration costs, which has a double impact on a producer’s return on investment. And this can have a major impact on the industry’s economic sustainability.”

Adapted from a press release by David Bizley

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/drilling-and-production/10082016/welldog-announces-new-shale-sweet-spot-technical-service/