Optimizing Production Analysis: A Focus on Modern Decline Methods for Tight Reservoirs in Northwest Peru

Abstract

The Talara basin is an oil basin in northwestern Peru that has been developed for more than 130 years and has more than 15,000 wells drilled in different producing reservoirs, mostlty in conmmingled. Eventhough this maturity degree, heterogeinities in rock quality and complexity in structural geology and stratigraphy make difficult to predict production performance of low permeability reservoirs with accuracy.This study is focused on predicting production performance of Lower Pariñas formation, after being hydraullically fractured in several stages. To model the production behavior, Arps Decline Curves are normally used, however, it has been found that this classical method does not allow to correctly model the behavior of tight reservoirs. In recent years, modern declination techniques such as modified Arps, Power Law, Narrow Exponential, Extended Exponential and Duong Model have been developed. The evaluation revealed that the modern methods offer a better fit to the production history, compared to the classical Arps method, in the periods of 0.5, 2 and 4 years of history, highlighting the importance of the new models. It is concluded that to obtain accurate forecasts with an error of less than 9%, at least 2 years of production history in neighboring wells is required to define the model parameters. It is specified that the modified Arps model is the most adequate for the Lower Pariñas formation, representative reservoir of the Talara basin.