Robert F. Shelley

Production Data Analysis Aids Fracture Treatment Design/Cherokee Group in Western Oklahoma

The quality and quantity of information available in the public domain is growing rapidly. New commercial sources of digital data are available. Companies are generating in-house databases to track and improve operating and service performance. The software and hardware required to obtain and manipulate large blocks of information has improved, making data analysis feasible on a routine basis. Access to large blocks of data in a convenient, usable form has created an opportunity for operators and service company engineers to work together, integrating data from multiple sources. By performing overall analyses of this integrated data, operators and engineers can develop an effective exploitation strategy. This paper details the benchmarking study of about 560 wells completed in the Cherokee Group of western Oklahoma. The study attempts to provide enough information about the area that service company engineers can determine optimal treatment designs. The Cherokee Group was chosen as the subject of this benchmarking study because of the large number of producing wells in the area and the variety of completion and stimulation methods used. The study examines wells with initial production dates from Jan. 1, 1988 to Jan. 1, 1996. Completion and stimulation techniques are compared to production results from a statistically large number of wells. Specific areas of interest included defining reasonable expectations and success in well projects and analyzing completion and stimulation procedures. Study results provide relevant comparisons that can help optimize completions and stimulations in the Cherokee Group. The paper also summarizes the methodology used for generating the report.