joelbaby, you could of gone easy on me (have you not heard of...

joelbaby, you could of gone easy on me (have you not heard of google, ha ha).

How do you come up with an anticipated flow rate before you have spud the hole?

This can only be done if the reservoir has been drilled before (otherwise it would be easy). What I'm saying is that data from previous wells in the area is collected, ie porosity, Density Resistivity of the sandstone in our case. They use seismic then to map these sandstones into the area you want to drill to see how think they are and the overburden above. The more information you have from other wells the better guess at flow rates you have. GAS/OIL/WATER also comes into play.

Wild cat wells, as there name suggests are wild cats no info is at hand so therefore they come out with bbls of oil in place or gas in place. They can estimate the flow rates by calculating formation pressure (overburden and true vertical depth).

2. Before you have commenced the frac process

Fracing has been going on for some time; they will have a good idea what fracing can do to a formation my testing cores in a lab. They test rock strength etc under tensile and compressive stress and the see how the rock fractures. They can then estimate the increase in the surface due to the extra cracks and how this will increase the flow rate. Increased fractures increases the permeability of a rock (a rock will not flow with just porosity...think of a sponge in the bath, the porosity with let you collect the water, but it will not let the water out fast if there is no mechanism to do so, if you squeeze the sponge the water will come out, you have just given the sponge permeability).

Fracking will increase normal flow rate by a certain number of fold, complicated maths is also involved!!!

Basically you never really know until drilled and tested. I think of them being guestimations rather than estimations.


Hope this helps.