Optimize Well Placements In Midland Basin Wolfcamp By Marcus Jones and Jon LaRue OKLAHOMA CITY-From a spatial perspective, optimizing the economic placement of wells can be a daunting challenge in unconventional reservoirs with multiple stacked pays. Operators are finding it difficult to optimize both the number of wells and the exact positioning of each wellbore within a target horizon. Sometimes moving only 10 or 20 feet up or down in a section can make the difference between a great well and a marginal one. This is true even for thick stacked-pay reservoirs such as the Permian Basin Wolfcamp, which can exceed 1,000 feet in gross thickness. The Wolfcamp formation contains multiple hydrocarbon-rich benches. These benches and associated strata are complex mixtures of heterogenic geological parameters such as weak/strong structural interfaces between facies, open/healed natural fractures, varying fluid and pressure regimes, and other lithological variables. In developing optimal reservoir targeting strategies, companies wrestle with maximizing hydrocarbon recovery within ever-present economic constraints. Consequently, multidisciplinary teams require a wide range of valid data to develop the best economic scenarios for optimal capital allocation and return on investment. Horizontal wells often cut across several lithologies that are assumed to be of similar rock type, but each lithology may have the potential to become a different productive zone. The key economic driver is to optimize the completion design for the targeted rock. This can be accomplished by carefully designing stage spacing and stimulation treatments to match the uniqueness of the geology and the resulting petrophysics of each rock type. JULY 2019 57