An ever-increasing proportion of our reserves are being won from unconventional reservoirs. These include tight sands, coalbeds, fractured shales and difficult-to-evaluate situations such as low resistivity pays. In many cases, the ability to evaluate the reserves potential of such resources is impossible without the use of special techniques and through the special collection of specific kinds of data. In addition, the ability to produce will often depend upon the effectiveness of the well completion and hydraulic fracture treatment, requiring the ability to evaluate such operations. Via our ongoing involvement in research projects, Scotia has developed the in-house expertise and technology to evaluate many of the unconventional reservoirs and difficult-to-evaluate situations encountered today. These include:
Scotia's log and core data processing software includes special tight gas sand modules that perform the appropriate corrections and calculations to properly derive representative reservoir and fluid parameters. We have extensive experience working with coalbed methane evaluation problems, having been involved in the early efforts to develop this resource. This includes statistical analysis and Monte Carlo reserves simulation to incorporate the uncertainties that are inherent in these evaluations. Scotia has performed large-scale evaluations of unconventional resources and reserves on the basin level utilizing a variety of tools and techniques. We were responsible for development of the modified McKelvey Box resource classification system. We have studied a number of fractured reservoirs using techniques ranging from statistical models to full-scale reservoir simulation. Our reservoir simulation team has conducted major studies on the dynamics of oil production from reservoirs such as the Austin Chalk. Back to Top